THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


1 

Ex  Libris 
',    C.  K.  OGDEN    j 


HISTORY 


OF 


THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE 


BY 


JOHN   KICHAKD   GREEN,   M.A. 


VOLUME  I. 

EAELY  ENGLAND  .  .  .  449—1071 
ENGLAND  UNDER  FOKEIGN  KINGS  1071 — 1214 
THE  CHAKTEK  .  .  .  1204 — 1291 

THE   PARLIAMENT       .  .          .      1307 — 1461 


CHICAGO 
BELFORD,CLARKE,&Co 

1881 


67i 

I8SI 

v.l 


I  DEDICATE  THIS  BOOK 

TO  TWO  DEAR  FRIENDS, 
MY  MASTERS  IN  THE  STUDY  OP  ENGLISH  HISTORY, 

EDWARD  AUGUSTUS  FREEMAN, 

AND 

WILLIAM  STUBBS. 


CONTENTS. 
BOOK  I. 

EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071. 
CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE. 
THE  ENGLISH  CONQUEST  OF  BRITAIN.      449 — 577          ...  7 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ENGLISH  KINGDOMS.      577 — 796       .          .          .  .          .          27 

CHAPTER  III. 

WESSEX   AND   THE   NORTHMEN.      796 — 947      .....  67 

CHAPTER  IV. 

FEUDALISM  AND  THE  MONARCHY.      854 — 1071     ....          83 

BOOK  II. 

ENGLAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  KINGS.     1071—1214. 
CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CONQUEROR.      1071—1085       ....  117 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE   NORMAN   KINGS.       1085 — 1154 128 

CHAPTER  III. 

HENRY  THE   SECOND.      1154 — 1189 163 

CHAPTER  IV. 

TMC  jLNGEVIN  KINGS.      1189—1204 173 

(Vii) 


Viii  CONTENTS. 

BOOK  m. 

THE  CHARTER.     1204—1201. 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER  L 
JOHN.     1214—1216 185 

CHAPTER  II. 

HENRY  THE  THIBD.      1216—1232 287 

CHAPTER  III. 
THE  BARONS'  WAB.    1232 — 1272 257 

CHAPTER  IV. 

EDWABD  THE  FIBST.      1272—1307 297 

BOOK  IV. 

THE  PARLIAMENT.    1307—1461. 
CHAPTER  I. 

EDWARD  THE  SECOND.      1307—1327      ....  .          867 

CHAPTER  II. 

EDWARD  THE  THIRD.      1327—1347 870 

CHAPTER  IIL 

THE   PEASANT  BEVOLT.      1347—1381 401 

CHAPTER  IV. 

RICHARD  THE   SECOND.      1381—1400 457 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  HOUSE  OF   LANCASTER.      1399—1422  ...  480 

CHAPTER  VL 

THE   WARS  OF  THE  ROSES.      1422—1461        .  514 


LIST  OF  MAPS. 

HO.  PAGE. 

1.  BRITAIN  AND  THE  ENGLISH  CONQUEST       ....  23 

2.  THE  ENGLISH  KINGDOMS  IN  A.D.  600  .        .        .        .        .  31 

3.  ENGLAND  AND  THE  DANELAGH 70 

4.  THE  DOMINIONS  OF  THE  ANGEVINS 152 

5.  IRELAND  JUST  BEFORE  THE  ENGLISH  INVASION       .       .  167 

6.  SCOTLAND  IN  1290 327 

7.  FRANCE  AT  THE  TREATY  OF  BRETIGNY      ....  414 

8.  THE  WARS  OF  THE  ROSES 540 


BOOK  L 

EARLY  ENGLAND. 
449—1071. 


AUTHORITIES  FOR  BOOK  I. 

(449_1071.) 

FOR  the  conquest  of  Britain  by  the  English  our  authorities  are 
scant  and  imperfect.  The  only  extant  British  account  is  the  "  Epis- 
tola  "  of  Gildas,  a  work  written  probably  about  A.D.  560.  The  style  of 
Gildas  is  diffuse  and  inflated,  but  his  book  is  of  great  value  in  the  light 
it  throws  on  the  state  of  the  island  at  that  time,  and  as  giving  at  its 
close  what  is  probably  the  native  story  of  the  conquest  of  Kent.  This 
is  the  only  part  of  the  straggle  of  which  we  have  any  record  from  the 
side  of  the  conquered.  The  English  conquerors,  on  the  other  hand, 
have  left  jottings  of  their  conquest  of  Kent,  Sussex,  and  Wessex  in  the 
curious  annals  which  form  the  opening  of  the  compilation  now  known 
as  the  "English"  or  "Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,"  annals  which  are  un- 
doubtedly historic,  though  with  a  slight  mythical  intermixture.  For 
the  history  of  the  English  conquest  of  Mid-Britain  or  the  Eastern  Coast 
we  possess  no  written  materials  from  either  side  ;  and  a  fragment  of 
the  Annals  of  Northumbria  embodied  in  the  later  compilation  ("  His- 
toria  Britonum  ")  which  bears  the  name  of  Nenuius  alone  throws  light 
on  the  conquest  of  the  North. 

From  these  inadequate  materials  however  Dr.  Guest  has  succeeded 
by  a  wonderful  combination  of  historical  and  archaeological  knowledge 
in  constructing  a  narrative  of  the  conquest  of  Southern  and  South- 
western Britain,  which  must  serve  as  the  starting-point  for  all  future 
enquirers.  This  narrative,  so  far  as  it  goes,  has  served  as  the  basis  of 
the  account  given  in  my  text  ;  and  I  can  only  trust  that  it  may  soon 
be  embodied  in  some  more  accessible  form  than  that  of  a  series  of 
papers  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Archaeological  Institute.  In  a  like 
way,  though  Kemble's  "Saxons  in  England"  and  Sir  F.  Palgrave's 
"  History  of  the  English  Commonwealth  "  (if  read  with  caution)  contain 
much  that  is  worth  notice,  our  knowledge  of  the  primitive  constitution 
of  the  English  people  and  the  changes  introduced  into  it  since  their 
settlement  in  Britain  must  be  mainly  drawn  from  the  "  Constitutional 
History"  of  Professor  Stubbs.  In  my  earlier  book  I  had  not  the  ad- 
vantage of  aid  from  this  invaluable  work,  which  was  then  unpublished; 
in  the  present  I  do  little  more  than  follow  it  in  all  constitutional  ques- 
tions as  far  as  it  has  at  present  gone. 

Baeda's  "Historia  Ecclesiastica  Gentis  Anglorum,"  a  work  of  which 
I  have  spoken  in  my  text,  is  the  primary  authority  for  the  history  of 
the  Northumbrian  overlordship  which  followed  the  Conquest.  It  is 
by  copious  insertions  from  Baeda  that  the  meagre  regnal  and  episcopal 
annals  of  the  West  Saxons  have  been  brought  to  the  shape  in  which 

(3) 


4  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

they  at  present  appear  in  the  part  of  the  English  Chronicle  which  con- 
cerns this  period.  The  life  of  Wilfrid  by  Eddi,  with  those  of  Cuthbert 
by  an  anonymous  contemporary  and  by  Baeda  himself,  throw  great  light 
on  the  religious  and  intellectual  condition  of  the  North  at  the  time  of 
its  supremacy.  But  with  the  fall  of  Northumbria  we  pass  into  a  period 
of  historical  dearth.  A  few  incidents  of  Mercian  history  are  preserved 
among  the  meagre  annals  of  Wessex  in  the  English  Chronicle  :  but 
for  the  most  part  we  are  thrown  upon  later  writers,  especially  Henry 
of  Huntingdon  and  William  of  Malmesbury,  who,  though  authors  of 
the  twelfth  century,  had  access  to  older  materials  which  are  now  lost. 
A  little  may  be  gleaned  from  biographies  such  as  that  of  Guthlac  of 
Crowland  ;  but  the  letters  of  Boniface  and  Alcwine,  which  have  been 
edited  by  Jaffe*  in  his  series  of  "  Monumenta  Germanica,"  form  the 
most  valuable  contemporary  materials  for  this  period. 

From  the  rise  of  Wessex  our  history  rests  mainly  on  the  English 
Chronicle.  The  earlier  part  of  this  work,  as  we  have  said,  is  a  com- 
pilation, and  consists  of  (1)  Annals  of  the  Conquest  of  South  Britain, 
and  (2)  Short  Notices  of  the  Kings  and  Bishops  of  Wessex  expanded 
by  copious  insertions  from  Baeda,  and  after  the  end  of  his  work  by  brief 
additions  from  some  northern  sources.  These  materials  may  have 
been  thrown  together  into  their  present  form  in  JElf  red's  time  as  a 
preface  to  the  far  fuller  annals  which  begin  with  the  reign  of  JEthel- 
wulf,  and  which  widen  into  a  great  contemporary  history  when  they 
reach  that  of  Alfred  himself.  After  Alfred's  day  the  Chronicle  varies 
much  in  value.  Through  the  reign  of  Eadward  the  Elder  it  is  copious, 
and  a  Mercian  Chronicle  is  imbedded  in  it :  it  then  dies  down  into  a 
series  of  scant  and  jejune  entries,  broken  however  with  grand  battle- 
songs,  till  the  reign  of  ^Ethelred  when  its  fulness  returns. 

Outside  the  Chronicle  we  encounter  a  great  and  valuable  mass  of 
historical  material  for  the  age  of  Alfred  and  his  successors.  The  life 
of  JElfred  which  bears  the  name  of  Asser,  puzzling  as  it  is  in  some 
ways,  is  probably  really  Asser' s  work,  and  certainly  of  contemporary 
authority.  The  Latin  rendering  of  the  English  Chronicle  which  bears 
the  name  of  ^thelweard  adds  a  little  to  our  knowledge  of  this  time. 
The  Laws,  which  form  the  base  of  our  constitutional  knowledge  of 
this  period,  fall,  as  has  been  well  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Freeman,  into 
two  classes.  Those  of  Eadward,  JEthelstan,  Eadmund,  and  Eadgar, 
are  like  the  earlier  laws  of  JEthelberht  and  Ine,  "  mainly  of  the  nature 
of  amendments  of  custom."  Those  of  Alfred,  ^Ethelred,  Cnut,  with 
those  which  bear  the  name  of  Eadward  the  Confessor,  "  aspire  to  the 
character  of  Codes."  They  are  printed  in  Mr.  Thorpe's  "Ancient 
Laws  and  Institutes  of  England,"  but  the  extracts  given  by  Professor 
Stubbs  in  his  "  Select  Charters  "  contain  all  that  directly  bears  on  our 
constitutional  growth.  A  vast  mass  of  Charters  and  other  documents 
belonging  to  this  period  has  been  collected  by  Kemble  in  his  "Codex 
Diplomaticus  JEvi  Saxonici,"  and  some  are  added  by  Mr.  Thorpe  in 
his  "  Diplomatarium  Anglo-Saxonicum."  Dunstan's  biographies  have 
been  collected  and  edited  by  Professor  Stubbs  in  the  series  published 
by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls. 

In  the  period  which  follows  the  accession  of  ./Ethelred  we  are  still 
aided  by  these  collections  of  royal  Laws  and  Charters,  and  the  English 
Chronicle  becomes  of  great  importance.  Its  various  copies  indeed 
differ  so  much  in  tone  and  information  from  one  another  that  they 
may  to  some  extent  be  looked  upon  as  distinct  works,  and  "  Florence  of 
Worcester"  is  probably  the  translation  of  a  valuable  copy  of  the 


AUTHORITIES.  5 

"  Chronicle  "  which  has  disappeared.  The  translation  however  was 
made  in  the  twelfth  century,  and  it  is  colored  by  the  revival  of  national 
feeling  which  was  characteristic  of  the  time.  Of  Eadward  the  Con- 
fessor himself  we  have  a  contemporary  biography  (edited  by  Mr.  Luard 
for  the  Master  of  the  Rolls)  which  throws  great  light  on  the  personal 
history  of  the  King  and  on  his  relations  to  the  house  of  Godwine. 

The  earlier  Norman  traditions  are  preserved  by  Dudo  of  St.  Quen- 
tin,  a  verbose  and  confused  writer,  whose  work  was  abridged  and  con- 
tinued by  William  of  Jumieges,  a  contemporary  of  the  Conqueror. 
William's  work  in  turn  served  as  the  basis  of  the  "  Roman  de  Rou" 
composed  by  Wace  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Second,  The  primary 
authority  for  the  Conqueror  himself  is  the  "  Gesta  Williemi "  of  his 
chaplain  and  violent  partizan,  William  of  Poitiers.  For  the  period  of 
the  invasion,  in  which  the  English  authorities  are  meagre,  we  have 
besides  these  the  contemporary  "  Carmen  de  Bello  Hastingensi,"  by 
Guy,  Bishop  of  Amiens,  and  the  pictures  in  the  Bayeux  Tapestry. 
Orderic,  a  writer  of  the  twelfth  century,  gossipy  and  confused  but 
honest  and  well-informed,  tells  us  much  of  the  religious  movement  in 
Normandy,  and  is  particularly  valuable  and  detailed  in  his  account  of 
the  period  after  the  battle  of  Senlac.  Among  secondary  authorities 
for  the  Norman  Conquest,  Simeon  of  Durham  is  useful  for  northern 
matters,  and  William  of  Malmesbury  worthy  of  note  for  his  remark- 
able combination  of  Norman  and  English  feeling.  Domesday  Book  is 
of  course  invaluable  for  the  Norman  settlement.  The  chief  documents 
for  the  early  history  of  Anjou  have  been  collected  in  the  "  Chroniques 
d' Anjou  "  published  by  the  Historical  Society  of  France.  Those  which 
are  authentic  are  little  more  than  a  few  scant  annals  of  religious 
houses  ;  but  light  is  thrown  on  them  by  the  contemporary  French 
chronicles.  The  "  Gesta  Comitum  "  is  nothing  but  a  compilation  of 
the  twelfth  century,  in  which  a  mass  of  Angevin  romance  as  to  the 
early  story  of  the  Counts  is  dressed  into  historical  shape  by  copious 
quotations  from  these  French  historians. 

It  is  possible  that  fresh  light  may  be  thrown  on  our  earlier  history 
when  historical  criticism  has  done  more  than  has  yet  been  done  for 
the  materials  given  us  by  Ireland  and  Wales.  For  Welsh  history  the 
"  Brut-y-Ty wysogion  "  and  the  "Annales  Cambrije  "  are  now  acces- 
sible in  the  series  published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls  ;  the  "  Chronicle 
of  Caradoc  of  Lancarvan"  is  translated  by  Powel  *the  Mabinogion, 
or  Romantic  Tales,  have  been  published  by  Lady  Charlotte  Guest  ; 
and  the  Welsh  Laws  collected  by  the  Record  Commission.  The  im- 
portance of  these,  as  embodying  a  customary  code  of  very  early  date, 
will  probably  be  better  appreciated  when  we  possess  the  whole  of  the 
Brehon  Laws,  the  customary  laws  of  Ireland,  which  are  now  being 
issued  by  the  Irish  Laws  Commission,  and  to  which  attention  has  justly 
been  drawn  by  Sir  Henry  Maine  ("Early  History  of  Institutions")  as 
preserving  Aryan  usages  of  the  remotest  antiquity. 

The  enormous  mass  of  materials  which  exists  'for  the  early  history 
of  Ireland,  various  as  they  are  in  critical  value,  may  be  seen  in  Mr. 
O'Curry's  "  Lectures  on  the  Materials  of  Ancient  Irish  History  ;  "  and 
they  maybe  conveniently-studied  by  the  general  reader  in  the  "  Annals 
of  the  Four  Masters,"  edited  by  Dr.  O'Donovan.  But  this  is  a  mere 
compilation  (though  generally  a  faithful  one)  made  about  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century  from  earlier  sources,  two  of  which  have 
been  published  in  the  Rolls  series.  One,  the  "  Wars  of  the  Gaedhil 
with  the  Gaill,"  is  an  account  of  the  Danish  wars  which  may  have 


6  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

been  written  in  the  eleventh  century  ;  the  other,  the  "Annals  of  Loch 
Ce,"  is  a  chronicle  of  Irish  affairs  from  the  end  of  the  Danish  wars  to 
1590.  The  "  Chrouicon  Scotorum"  (in  the  same  series)  extends  to  the 
year  1150,  and  though  composed  in  the  seventeenth  century  is  valuable 
from  the  learning  of  its  author,  Duald  Mac-Firbis.  The  works  of  Col- 
gan  are  to  Irish  church  affairs  what  the  "  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters  " 
are  to  Irish  civil  history.  They  contain  a  vast  collection  of  translations 
and  transcriptions  of  early  saints'  lives,  from  those  of  Patrick  down- 
wards. Adamnan's  "Life  of  Columba"  (admirably  edited  by  Dr. 
Reeves)  supplies  some  details  to  the  story  of  the  Northumbrian  king- 
dom. Among  more  miscellaneous  works  we  find  the  "  Book  of  Rights," 
a  summary  of  the  dues  and  rights  of  the  several  over-kings  and  under- 
kings,  of  much  earlier  date  probably  than  the  Norman  invasion  ;  and 
Connac's  "  Glossary,"  attributed  to  the  tenth  century  and  certainly  an 
early  work,  from  which  much  may  be  gleaned  of  legal  and  social  de- 
tails, and  something  of  the  pagan  religion  of  Ireland. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   ENGLISH   CONQUEST    OF   BRITAIN. 

449_577. 

FOE  the  fatherland  of  the  English  race  we  must  look 
far  away  from  England  itself.  In  the  fifth  century  after 
the  birth  of  Christ  the  one  country  which  we  know  to 
have  borne  the  name  of  Angeln  or  England  lay  within 
the  district  which  is  now  called  Sleswick,  a  district  in 
the  heart  of  the  peninsula  that  parts  the  Baltic  from  the 
northern  seas.  Its  pleasant  pastures,  its  black-timbered 
homesteads,  its  prim  little  townships  looking  down  on 
inlets  of  purple  water,  were  then  but  a  wild  waste  of 
heather  and  sand,  girt  along  the  coast  with  a  sunless 
woodland  broken  here  and  there  by  meadows  that  crept 
down  to  the  marshes  and  the  sea.  The  dwellers  in  this 
district  however  seem  to  have  been  merely  an  outlying 
fragment  of  what  was  called  the  Engle  or  English  folk, 
the  bulk  of  whom  lay  probably  in  what  is  now  Lower 
Hanover  and  Oldenburg.  On  one  side  of  them  the 
Saxons  of  Westphalia  held  the  land  from  the  Weser  to 
the  Rhine ;  on  the  other  the  Eastphalian  Saxons  stretched 
away  to  the  Elbe.  North  again  of  the  fragment  of  the 
English  folk  in  Sleswick  lay  another  kindred  tribe,  the 
Jutes,  whose  name  is  still  preserved  in  their  district 
of  Jutland.  Engle,  Saxon,  and  Jute  all  belonged  to  the 
same  Low-German  branch  of  the  Teutonic  family ;  and 
at  the  moment  when  history  discovers  them  they  were 
being  drawn  together  by  the  ties  of  a  common  blood, 
common  speech,  common  social  and  political  institu- 
tions. There  is  little  ground  indeed  for  believing  that 


8  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  three  tribes  looked  on  themselves  as  one  people,  or 
that  we  can  as  yet  apply  to  them,  save  by  anticipation, 
the  common  name  of  Englishmen.  But  each  of  them 
was  destined  to  share  in  the  conquest  of  the  land  in 
which  we  live ;  and  it  is  from  the  union  of  all  of  them 
when  its  conquest  was  complete  that  the  English  people 
has  sprung. 

Of  the  temper  and  life  of  the  folk  in  this  older  Eng- 
land we  know  little.  But  from  the  glimpses  that  we 
catch  of  it  when  conquest  had  brought  them  to  the 
shores  of  Britain  their  political  and  social  organization 
must  have  been  that  of  the  German  race  to  which  they 
belonged.  In  their  villages  lay  ready  formed  the  social 
and  political  life  which  is  round  us  in  the  England  of  to- 
day. A  belt  of  forest  or  waste  parted  each  from  its  fel- 
low villages,  and  within  this  boundary  or  mark  the 
"  township,"  as  the  village  was  then  called  from  the 
"  tun "  or  rough  fence  and  trench  that  served  as  its 
simple  fortification,  formed  a  complete  and  independent 
bod}r,  though  linked  by  ties  which  were  strengthening 
every  day  to  the  townships  about  it  and  the  tribe  of 
which  it  formed  a  part.  Its  social  centre  was  the  home- 
stead where  the  setheling  or  eorl,  a  descendant  of  the 
first  English  settlers  in  the  waste,  still  handed  down  the 
blood  and  traditions  of  his  fathers.  Around  this  home- 
stead or  aethel,  each  in  its  little  croft,  stood  the  lowlier 
dwellings  of  freelings  or  ceorls,  men  sprung,  it  may  be, 
from  descendants  of  the  earliest  settler  who  had  in  vari- 
ous ways  forfeited  their  claim  to  a  share  in  the  original 
homestead,  or  more  probably  from  incomers  into  the  vil- 
lage who  had  since  settled  round  it  and  been  admitted 
to  a  share  in  the  land  and  freedom  of  the  community. 
The  eorl  was  distinguished  from  his  fellow  villagers  by 
his  wealth  and  his  nobler  blood ;  he  was  held  by  them 
in  an  hereditary  reverence  ;  and  it  was  from  him  and  his 
fellow  sethelings  that  host-leaders,  whether  of  the  village 
or  the  tribe,  were  chosen  in  times  of  war.  But  this 
claim  to  precedence  rested  simply  on  the  free  recogni- 
tion of  his  fellow  villagers.  Within  the  township  every 
freeman  or  ceorl  was  equal.  It  was  the  freeman  who 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.  9 

was  the  base  of  village  society.  He  was  the  "free- 
necked  man  "  whose  long  hair  floated  over  a  neck  which 
had  never  bowed  to  a  lord.  He  was  the  **  weaponed 
man  "  who  alone  bore  spear  arid  sword,  and  who  alone 
preserved  that  right  of  self-redress  or  private  war  which 
in  such  a  state  of  society  formed  the  main  check  upon 
lawless  outrage. 

Among  the  English,  as  among  all  the  races  of  man- 
kind, justice  had  originally  sprung  from  each  man's 
personal  action.  There  had  been  a  time  when  every 
freeman  was  his  own  avenger.  But  even  in  the  earliest 
forms  of  English  society  of  which  we  find  traces  this 
right  of  self-defence  was  being  modified  and  restricted 
by  a  growing  sense  of  public  justice.  The  "  blood- wite" 
or  compensation  in  money  for  personal  wrong  was  the 
first  effort  of  the  tribe  as  a  whole  to  regulate  private 
revenge.  The  freeman's  life  and  the  freeman's  limb  had 
each  on  this  system  its  legal  price.  "  Eye  for  eye,"  ran 
the  rough  code,  and  "  life  for  life,"  or  for  each  fair  dam- 
ages. We  see  a  further  step  towards  the  modern  recog- 
nition of  a  wrong  as  done  not  to  the  individual  man  but 
to  the  people  at  large  in  another  custom  of  early  date. 
The  price  of  life  or  limb  was  paid,  not  by  the  wrong- 
doer to  the  man  he  wronged,  but  by  the  family  or  house 
of  the  wrong-doer  to  the  family  or  house  of  the  wronged. 
Order  and  law  were  thus  made  to  rest  in  each  little 
group  of  people  upon  the  blood-bond  which  knit  its  fam- 
ilies together  ;  every  outrage  was  held  to  have  been  done 
b}T  all  who  were  linked  in  blood  to  the  doer  of  it,  every 
crime  to  have  been  done  against  all  who  were  linked  in 
blood  to  the  sufferer  from  it.  From  this  sense  of  the 
value  of  the  family  bond  as  a  means  of  restraining  the 
wrong-doer  by  forces  which  the  tribe  as  a  whole  did  not 
as  yet  possess  sprang  the  first  rude  forms  of  English  jus- 
tice. Each  kinsman  was  his  kinsman's  keeper,  bound  to 
protect  him  from  wrong,  to  hinder  him  from  wrong- 
doing, and  to  suffer  with  him  and  pay  for  him  if  wrong 
were  done.  So  fully  was  this  principle  recognized  that 
even  if  any  man  was  charged  before  his  fellow-tribesmen 
with  crime  his  kinsfolk  still  remained  in  fact  his  sole 


10  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

judges ;  for  it  was  by  their  solemn  oatli  of  his  innocence 
or  his  guilt  that  he  had  to  stand  or  foil. 

As  the  blood-bond  gave  its  first  form  to  English  jus- 
tice, so  it  gave  their  first  forms  to  English  society  and 
English  warfare.  Kinsmen  fought  side  by  .side  in  the 
hour  of  battle,  and  the  feelings  of  honor  and  discipline 
which  held  the  host  together  were  drawn  from  the  com- 
mon duty  of  every  man  in  each  little  group  of  warriors 
to  his  house.  And  as  they  fought  side  by  side  on  the 
field,  so  they  dwelled  side  by  side  on  the  soil.  Harling 
abode  by  Harling,  and  Billing  by  Billing;  and  each 
"  wick  "  or  "  ham  "  or  "  stead  "  or  "  tun  "  took  its  name 
from  the  kinsmen  who  dwelled  together  in  it.  In  this 
way  the  home  or  "  ham  "  of  the  Billings  was  Billingham, 
and  the  "  tun  "  or  township  of  the  Harlings  was  Haiiing- 
ton.  But  in  such  settlements  the  tie  of  blood  was 
widened  into  the  larger  tie  of  land.  Land  with  the  Ger- 
man race  seems  at  a  very  early  time  to  have  become 
everywhere  the  accompaniment  of  full  freedom.  The 
freeman  was  strictly  the  free-holder,  and  the  exercise  of 
his  full  rights  as  a  free  member  of  the  community  to 
which  he  belonged  became  inseparable  from  the  posses- 
sion of  his  "  holding  "  in  it.  But  property  had  not  as 
yet  reached  that  stage  of  absolutely  personal  possession 
which  the  social  philosophy 'of  a  later  time  falsely  re- 
garded as  its  earliest  state.  The  woodland  and  pasture- 
land  of  an  English  village  were  still  undivided,  and  every 
free  villager  had  the  right  of  turning  into  it  his  cattle  or 
swine.  The  meadow-land  lay  in  like  manner  open  and 
undivided  from  hay-harvest  to  spring.  It  was  only  when 
grass  began  to  grow  afresh  that  the  common  meadow 
was  fenced  off  into  grass-fields,  one  for  each  household 
in  the  village ;  and  when  hay-harvest  was  over  fence 
and  division  were  at  an  end  again.  The  plough-land 
alone  was  permanently  allotted  in  equal  shares  both  of 
corn-land  and  fallow-land  to  the  families  of  the  freemen, 
though  even  the  plough-land  was  subject  to  fresh  division 
as  the  number  of  claimants  grew  greater  or  less. 

It  was  this  sharing  in  the  common  land  which  marked 
off  the  freeman  or  ceorl  from  the  unfree  man  or  Iset,  the 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  11 

tiller  of  land  which  another  owned.  As  the  ceorl  was 
the  descendant  of  settlers  who  whether  from  their  earlier 
arrival  or  from  kinship  with  the  original  settlers  of  the 
village  had  been  admitted  to  a  share  in  its  land  and  its 
corporate  life,  so  the  Iset  was  a  descendant  of  later 
comers  to  whom  such  a  share  was  denied,  or  in  some  cases 
perhaps  of  earlier  dwellers  from  whom  the  land  had  been 
wrested  by  force  of  arms.  In  the  modern  sense  of  freedom 
the  Iset  was  free  enough.  He  had  house  and  home  of  his 
own,  his  life  and  limb  were  as  secure  as  the  ceoiTs — save 
as  against  his  lord ;  it  is  probable  from  what  we  see  in 
later  laws  that  as  time  went  on  he  was  recognized  among 
the  three  tribes  as  a  member  of  the  nation,  summoned 
to  the  folk-moot,  allowed  equal  right  at  law,  and  called 
like  the  full  free  man  to  the  hosting.  But  he  was  unfree 
as  regards  lord  and  land.  He  had  neither  part  nor  lot  in 
the  common  land  of  the  village.  The  ground  which  he 
tilled  he  held  of  some  free  man  of  the  tribe  to  whom  he 
paid  rent  in  labor  or  in  kind.  And  this  man  was  his 
lord.  Whatever  rights  the  unfree  villager  might  gain  in 
the  general  social  life  of  his  fellow  villagers,  he  had  no 
rights  as  against  his  lord.  He  could  leave  neither  land  nor 
lord  at  his  will.  He  was  bound  to  render  due  service  to 
his  lord  in  tillage  or  in  fight.  So  long  however  as  these 
services  were  done  the  land  was  his  own.  His  lord  could 
not  take  it  from  him ;  and  he  was  bound  to  give  him  aid 
and  protection  in  exchange  for  his  services. 

Far  different  from  the  position  of  the  Iset  was  that  of 
the  slave,  though  there  is  no  ground  for  believing  that  the 
slave  class  was  other  than  a  small  one.  It  was  a  class 
which  sprang  mainly  from  debt  or  crime.  Famine  drove 
men  to  "  bend  their  heads  in  the  evil  days  for  meat ; "  the 
debtor,  unable  to  discharge  his  debt,  flung  on  the  ground 
his  freeman's  sword  and  spear,  took  up  the  laborer's 
mattock,  and  placed  his  head  as  a  slave  within  a  master's 
hands.  The  criminal  whose  kinsfolk  would  not  make  up 
his  fine  became  a  crime-serf  of  the  plaintiff  or  the  king. 
Sometimes  a  father  pressed  by  need  sold  children  and  wife 
into  bondage.  In  any  case  the  slave  became  part  of  the 
live  stock  of  his  master's  estate,  to  be  willed  away  at  death 


12  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

with  horse  or  ox,  whose  pedigree  was  kept  as  carefully  as 
his  own.  His  children  were  bondsmen  like  himself;  even  a 
freeman's  children  by  a  slave  mother  inherited  the  mother's 
taint.  "  Mine  is  the  calf  that  is  born  of  my  cow,"  ran  an 
English  proverb.  Slave  cabins  clustered  round  the  home- 
stead of  every  rich  landowner  ;  ploughman,  shepherd, 
goatherd,  swineherd,  oxherd  and  cowherd,  dairymaid, 
barnman,  sower,  hay  ward  and  woodward,were  often  slaves. 
It  was  not  indeed  slavery  such  as  we  have  kn<Jwn  in 
modern  times,  for  stripes  and  bonds  were  rare :  if  the 
slave  was  slain  it  was  by  an  angry  blow,  not  by  the  lash. 
But  his  master  could  slay  him  if  he  would  ;  it  was  but 
a  chattel  the  less.  The  slave  had  no  place  in  the  justice 
court,  no  kinsman  to  claim  vengeance  or  guilt-fine  for 
his  wrong.  If  a  stranger  slew  him  his  lord  claimed  the 
damages ;  if  guilty  of  wrong-doing,  "  his  skin  paid  for 
him  "  under  his  master's  lash.  If  he  fled  he  might  be 
chased  like  a  strayed  beast,  and  when  caught  he  might 
be  flogged  to  death.  If  the  wrong-doer  were  a  woman- 
slave  she  might  be  burned, 

With  the  public  life  of  the  village  however  the  slave 
had  nothing,  the  laet  in  early  days  little,  to  do.  In  its 
Moot,  the  common  meeting  of  its  villagers  for  justice  and 
government,  a  slave  had  no  place  or  voice,  while  the  Iset 
was  originally  represented  by  the  lord  whose  land  he 
tilled.  The  life,  the  sovereignty  of  the  settlement  resided 
solely  in  the  body  of  the  freemen  whose  holdings  lay  round 
the  moot-hill  or  the  sacred  tree  where  the  community  met 
from  time  to  time  to  deal  out  its  own  justice  and  to  make 
its  own  laws.  Here  new  settlers  were  admitted  to  the 
freedom  of  the- township,  and  bye-laws  framed  and  head- 
man and  tithing-man  chosen  for  its  governance.  Here 
plough-land  and  -  meadow-land  were  shared  in  due  lot 
among  the  villagers,  and  field  and  homestead  passed  from 
man  to  man  by  the  delivery  of  a  turf  cut  from  its  soil. 
Here  strife  of  farmer  with  fanner  was  settled  according  to 
the  "  customs  "  of  the  township  as  its  elder  men  stated 
them,  ind  four  men  were  chosen  to  follow  headman  or 
ealdorman  to  hundred-court  or  war.  It  is  with  a  rev- 
erence such  as  is  stirred  by  the  sight  of  the  head-waters 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071  13 

of  some  mighty  river  that  one  looks  back  to  these  village- 
moots  of  Friesland  or  Sleswick.  It  was  here  that  Eng- 
land learned  to  be  a  "  mother  of  Parliaments."  It  was 
in  these  tiny  knots  of  farmers  that  the  men  from  whom 
Englishmen  were  to  spring  learned  the  worth  of  public 
opinion,  of  public  discussion,  the  worth  of  the  agreement, 
the  "  common  sense,"  the  general  conviction  to  which 
discussion  leads,  as  of  the  laws  which  derive  their  force 
from  being  expressions  of  that  general  conviction.  A 
humorist  of  our  own  day  has  laughed  at  Parliaments  as 
"  talking  shops,"  and  the  laugh  has  been  echoed  by  some 
who  have  taken  humor  for  argument.  But  talk  is  per- 
suasion, and  persuasion  is  force,  the  one  force  which  can 
sway  freemen  to  deeds  such  as  those  which  have  made 
England  what  she  is.  The  "  talk  "  of  the  village  moot, 
the  strife  and  judgment  of  men  giving  freely  their  own 
rede  and  setting  it  as  freely  aside  for  what  they  learn 
to  be  the  wiser  rede  of  other  men,  is  the  ground  work 
of  English  history. 

Small  therefore  as  it  might  be,  the  township  or  village 
was  thus  the  primary  and  perfect  type  of  English  life, 
domestic,  social,  and  political.  All  that  England  has  been 
since  lay  there.  But  changes  of  which  we  know  nothing 
had  long  before  the  time  at  which  our  history  opens 
grouped  these  little  commonwealths  together  in  larger 
communities,  whether  we  name  them  Tribe,  People,  or 
Folk.  The  ties  of  race  and  kindred  were  no  doubt  drawn 
tighter  by  the  needs  of  war.  The  organization  of  each 
Folk,  as  such,  sprang  in  all  likelihood  mainly  from  war, 
from  a  common  greed  of  conquest,  a  common  need  of 
defence.  Its  form  at  any  rate  was  wholly  military.  The 
Folk-moot  was  in  fact  the  war-host,  the  gathering  of 
every  freeman  of  the  tribe  in  arms.  The  head  of  the 
Folk,  a  head  who  existed  only  so  long  as  war  went  on, 
was  the  leader  whom  the  host  chose  to  command  it.  Its 
Witenagemote  or  meeting  of  wise  men  was  the  host's 
council  of  war,  the  gathering  of  those  ealdormen  who  had 
brought  the  men  of  their  villages  to  the  field.  The  host 
was  formed  by  levies  from  the  various  districts  of  the 
tribe ;  the  larger  of  which  probably  owed  their  name  of 


14        HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

"  hundreds  "  to  the  hundred  warriors  which  each  origin- 
ally sent  to  it.  In  historic  times  however  the  regularity 
of  such  a  military  organization,  if  it  ever  existed,  had 
passed  away,  and  the  quotas  varied  with  the  varying 
customs  of  each  district.  But  men,  whether  many  or  few, 
were  still  due  from  each  district  to  the  host,  and  a  cry  of 
war  at  once  called  town-reeve  and  hundred-reeve  with 
their  followers  to  the  field. 

The  military  organization  of  the  tribe  thus  gave  from 
the  first  its  form  to  the  civil  organization.  But  the  pecu- 
liar shape  which  its  civil  organization  assumed  was  de- 
termined by  a  principle  familiar  to  the  Germanic  races 
and  destined  to  exercise  a  vast  influence  on  the  future 
of  mankind.  This  was  the  principle  of  representation. 
The  four  or  ten  villagers  who  followed  the  reeve  of  each 
township  to  the  general  muster  of  the  hundred  were  held 
to  represent  the  whole  body  of  the  township  from  whence 
they  came.  Their  voice  was  its  voice,  their  doing  its 
doing,  their  pledge  its  pledge.  The  hundred-moot,  a 
moot  which  was  made  by  this  gathering  of  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  townships  that  lay  within  its  bounds,  thus 
became  at  once  a  court  of  appeal  from  the  moots  of  each 
separate  village  as  well  as  of  arbitration  in  dispute  be- 
tween township  and  township.  The  judgment  of  graver 
crimes  and  of  life  or  death  fell  to  its  share ;  while  it  ne- 
cessarily possessed  the  same  right  of  law-making  for  the 
hundred  that  the  village-moot  possessed  for  each  separate 
village.  And  as  hundred-moot  stood  above  town-moot, 
so  above  the  hundred-moot  stood  the  Folk-moot,  the 
general  muster  of  the  people  in  arms,  at  once  war-host 
and  highest  law-court  and  general  Parliament  of  the 
tribe.  But  whether  in  Folk-moot  or  hundred-moot,  the 
principle  of  representation  was  preserved.  In  both  the 
constitutional  forms,  the  forms  of  deliberation  and  deci- 
sion, were  the  same.  In  each  the  priests  proclaimed 
silence,  the  ealdormen  of  higher  blood  spoke,  groups  of 
freemen  from  each  township  stood  round,  shaking  their 
spears  in  assent,  clashing  shields  in  applause,  settling 
matters  in  the  end  by  loud  shouts  of  "  Aye  "  or  "  Nay." 
Of  the  social  or  the  industrial  life  of  our  fathers  in  this 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          15 

older  England  we  know  less  than  of  their  political  life. 
But  there  is  no  ground  for  believing  them  to  have  been 
very  different  in  these  respects  from  the  other  German 
peoples  who  were  soon  to  overwhelm  the  Roman  world. 
Though  their  border  nowhere  touched  the  border  of  the 
Empire  they  were  far  from  being  utterly  strange  to  its 
civilization.  Roman  commerce  indeed  reached  the  shores 
of  the  Baltic,  and  we  have  abundant  evidence  that  the 
arts  and  refinement  of  Rome  were  brought  into  contact 
with  these  earlier  Englishmen.  Brooches,  sword-belts, 
and  shield-bosses  which  have  been  found  in  Sleswick, 
and  which  can  be  dated  not  later  than  the  close  of  the 
third  century,  are  clearly  either  of  Roman  make  or 
closely  modelled  on  Roman  metal-work.  The  vessels  of 
twisted  glass  which  we  know  to  have  been  in  use  at  the 
tables  of  English  and  Saxon  chieftains  came,  we  can 
hardly  doubt,  from  Roman  glass-works.  Discoveries  of 
Roman  coins  in  Sleswick  peat-mosses  afford  a  yet  more 
conclusive  proof  of  direct  intercourse  with  the  Empire. 
But  apart  from  these  outer  influences  the  men  of  the 
three  tribes  were  far  from  being  mere  savages.  They 
were  fierce  warriors,  but  they  were  also  busy  fishers 
and  tillers  of  the  soil,  as  proud  of  their  skill  in  hand- 
ling plough  and  mattock  or  steering  the  rude  boat  with 
which  they  hunted  walrus  and  whale  as  of  their  skill 
in  handling  sword  and  spear.  They  were  hard  drinkers, 
no  doubt,  as  they  were  hard  toilers,  and  the  "  ale-feast " 
was  the  centre  of  their  social  life.  But  coarse  as  the 
revel  might  seem  to  modern  eyes,  the  scene  within  the 
timbered  hall  which  rose  in  the  midst  of  their  village  was 
often  Homeric  in  its  simplicity  and  dignity.  Queen  or 
Eorl's  wife  with  a  train  of  maidens  bore  ale-bowl  or 
mead-bowl  round  the  hall  from  the  high  settle  of  King 
or  Ealdorman  in  the  midst  to  the  mead  benches  ranged 
around  its  walls,  while  the  gleeman  sang  the  hero-songs 
of  his  race.  Dress  and  arms  showed  traces  of  a  love  of 
art  and  beauty,  none  the  less  real  that  it  was  rude  and 
incomplete.  Rings,  amulets,  ear-rings,  neck  pendants, 
proved  in  their  workmanship  the  deftness  of  the  gold- 
smith's art.  Cloaks  were  often  fastened  with  golden 


16  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

buckles  of  curious  and  exquisite  form,  set  sometimes 
with  rough  jewels  and  inlaid  with  enamel.  The  bronze 
boar-crest  on  the  warrior's  helmet,  the  intricate  adorn- 
ment of  the  warrior's  shield,  tell  like  the  honour  in  which 
the  smith  was  held  their  tale  of  industrial  art.  It  is  only 
in  the  English  pottery,  handmade,  and  marked  with 
coarse  zig-zag  patterns,  that  we  find  traces  of  utter  rude- 
ness. 

The  religion  of  these  men  was  the«same  as  that  of  the 
rest  of  the  German  peoples.  Christianity  had  by  this 
time  brought  about  the  conversion  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
but  it  had  not  penetrated  as  yet  among  the  forests  of  the 
north.  The  common  God  of  the  English  people  was 
Woden,  the  war-god,  the  guardian  of  ways  and  bound- 
aries, to  whom  his  worshippers  attributed  the  invention 
of  letters,  and  whom  every  tribe  held  to  be  the  first 
ancestor  of  its  kings.  Our  own  names  for  the  days  of 
the  week  still  recall  to  us  the  gods  whom  our  fathers 
worshipped  in  their  German  homeland.  Wednesday  is 
Woden's-day,  as  Thursday  is  the  day  of  Thunder,  the 
god  of  air  and  storm  and  rain.  Friday  is  Frea's-day,  the 
deity  of  peace  and  joy  and  fruitfulness,  whose  emblems, 
borne  aloft  by  dancing  maidens,  brought  increase  to 
every  field  and  stall  they  visited.  Saturday  commemo- 
rates an  obscure  god  SaBtere ;  Tuesday  the  dark  god, 
Tiw,  to  meet  whom  was  death.  Eostre,  the  god  of  the 
dawn  or  of  the  spring,  lends  his  name  to  the  Christian 
festival  of  the  Resurrection.  Behind  these  floated  the 
dim  shapes  of  an  older  mythology ;  "  Wyrd,"  the  death- 
goddess,  whose  memory  lingered  long  in  the  "  Weird  " 
of  northern  superstition ;  or  the  Shield-maidens,  the 
"  mighty  women  "  who,  an  old  rime  tells  us,  "  wrought 
on  the  battle-field  their  toil  and  hurled  the  thrilling 
javelins."  Nearer  to  the  popular  fancy  lay  deities  of 
wood  and  fell  or  hero-gods  of  legend  and  song ;  Nicor, 
the  water-sprite  who  survives  in  our  nixies  and  "  Old 
Nick  ;  "  Weland,  the  forger  of  weighty  shields  and  sharp- 
biting  swords,  who  found  a  later  home  in  the  "  Weyland's 
smithy "  of  Berkshire ;  Egil,  the  hero-archer,  whose 
legend  is  one  with  that  of  Cloudesly  or  Tell.  A  nature- 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  17 

worship  of  this  sort  lent  itself  ill  to  the  purposes  of  a 
priesthood  ;  and  though  a  priestly  class  existed  it  seems 
at  no  time  to  have  had  much  weight  among  Englishmen. 
As  each  freeman  was  his  own  judge  and  his  own  law- 
maker, so  he  was  his  own  house-priest ;  and  English 
worship  lay  commonly  in  the  sacrifice  which  the  house- 
father offered  to  the  gods  of  his  hearth. 

It  is  not  indeed  in  Woden-worship  or  in  the  worship  of 
the  older  gods  of  flood  and  fell  that  we  must  look  for 
the  real  religion  of  our  fathers.  The  song  of  Beowulf, 
though  the  earliest  of  English  poems,  is  as  we  have  it 
now  a  poem  of  the  eighth  century,  the  work  it  may  be 
of  some  English  missionary  of  the  days  of  Baeda  and 
Boniface  who  gathered  in  the  very  homeland  of  his  race 
the  legends  of  its  earlier  prime.  But  the  thin  veil  of 
Christianity  which  he  has  flung  over  it  fades  away  as  we 
follow  the  hero  legend  of  our  fathers ;  and  the  secret  of 
their  moral  temper,  of  their  conception  of  life  breathes 
through  every  line.  Life  was  built  with  them  not  on 
the  hope  of  a  hereafter,  but  on  the  proud  self-conscious- 
ness of  noble  souls.  "  I  have  this  folk  ruled  these  fifty 
winters,"  sings  a  hero-king  as  he  sits  death-smitten  beside 
the  dragon's  mound.  "  Lives  there  no  folk-king  of  kings 
about  me — not  any  one  of  them — dare  in  the  war-strife 
welcome  my  onset !  Time's  change  and  chances  I  have 
abided,  held  my  own  fairly,  sought  not  to  snare  men ; 
oath  never  sware  I  falsely  against  right.  So  for  all  this 
may  I  glad  be  at  heart  now,  sick  though  I  sit  here, 
wounded  with  death-wounds ! "  In  men  of  such  a 
temper,  strong  with  the  strength  of  manhood  and  full  of 
the  vigor  and  the  love  of  life,  the  sense  of  its  shortness 
and  of  the  mystery  of  it  all  woke  chords  of  a  pathetic 
poetry.  "  Soon  will  it  be,"  ran  the  warning  rime,  "  that 
sickness  or  sword-blade  shear  thy  strength  from  thee.  or 
the  fire  ring  thee,  or  the  flood  whelm  thee,  or  the  sword 
grip  thee,  or  arrow  hit  thee,  or  age  o'ertake  thee,  and 
thine  eye's  brightness  sink  down  in  darkness."  Strong 
as  he  might  be,  man  struggled  in  vain  with  the  doom  that 
encompassed  him,  that  girded  his  life  with  a  thousand 
perils  and  broke  it  at  so  short  a  span.  "  To  us,"  cries 


18  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Beowulf  in  his  last  fight,  "  to  us  it  shall  be  as  our  Weird 
betides,  that  Weird  that  is  every  man's  lord !  "  But  the 
sadness  with  which  these  Englishmen  fronted  the 
mysteries  of  life  and  death  had  nothing  in  it  of  the  un- 
manly despair  which  bids  men  eat  and  drink  for  to- 
morrow they  die.  Death  leaves  man  man  and  master  of 
his  fate.  The  thought  of  good  fame,  of  manhood,  is 
stronger  than  the  thought  of  doom.  "  Well  shall  a  man 
do  when  in  the  strife  he- minds  but  of  winning  longsome 
renown,  nor  for  his  life  cares !  "  "  Death  is  better  than 
life  of  shame  !  "  cries  Beowulf  s  sword-fellow.  Beowulf 
himself  take  up  his  strife  with  the  fiend,  "  go  the  weird 
as  it  will."  If  life  is  short,  the  more  cause  to  work 
bravely  till  it  is  over.  "  Each  man  of  us  shall  abide  the 
end  of  his  life-work ;  let  him  that  may  work,  work  his 
doomed  deeds  ere  death  come ! " 

The  energy  of  these  peoples  found  vent  in  a  restlessness 
which  drove  them  to  take  part  in  the  general  attack  of  the 
German  race  on  the  Empire  of  Rome.  For  busy  tillers 
and  busy  fishers  as  Englishmen  were,  they  were  at  heart 
fighters ;  and  their  world  was  a  world  of  war.  Tribe  warred 
with  tribe,  and  village  with  village ;  even  within  the 
township  itself  feuds  parted  household  from  household, 
and  passions  of  hatred  and  vengeance  were  handed  on  from 
father  to  son.  Their  mood  was  above  all  a  mood  of  fight- 
ing men,  venturesome,  self-reliant,  proud,  with  a  dash  of 
hardness  and  cruelty  in  it,  but  ennobled  by  the  virtues 
which  spring  from  war,  by  personal  courage  and  loyalty  to 
plighted  word,  by  a  high  and  stern  sense  of  manhood  and 
the  worth  of  man.  A  grim  joy  in  hard  fighting  was  already 
a  characteristic  of  the  race.  War  was  the  Englishman's 
"  shield-play  "  and  "  sword-game  ;  "  the  gleeman's  verse 
took  fresh  fire  as  he  sang  of  the  rush  of  the  host  and  the 
crash  of  its  shield-line.  Their  arms  and  weapons,  helmet 
and  mailshirt,  tall  spear  and  javelin,  sword  and  seax,  the 
short  broad  dagger  that  hung  at  each  warrior's  girdle, 
gathered  to  them  much  of  the  legend  and  the  art  which 
gave  color  and  poetry  to  the  life  of  Englishmen.  Each 
sword  had  its  name  like  a  living  thing.  And  next  to  their 
love  of  war  came  their  love  of  the  sea.  Everywhere 


EARLY    ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  19 

throughout  Beowulf  s  song,  as  everywhere  throughout  the 
life  that  it  pictures,  we  catch  the  salt  whiff  of  the  sea. 
The  Englishman  was  as  proud  of  his  sea-craft  as  of  his 
war-craft ;  sword  in  teeth  he  plunged  into  the  sea  to  meet 
walrus  and  sea-lion  ;  he  told  of  his  whale-chase  amidst  the 
icy  waters  of  the  north.  Hardly  less  than  his  love  for  the 
sea  was  the  love  he  bore  to  the  ship  that  traversed  it.  In 
the  fond  playfulness  of  English  verse  the  ship  was  "  the 
wave-floater,"  "  the  foam-necked,"  "  like  a  bird  "  as  it 
skimmed  the  wave-crest,  "  like  a  swan  "  as  its  curved  prow 
breasted  the  "  swan-road  "  of  the  sea. 

Their  passion  for  the  sea  marked  out  for  them  their  part 
in  the  general  movement  of  the  German  nations.  While 
Goth  and  Lombard  were  slowly  advancing  over  mountain 
and  plain  the  boats  of  the  Englishmen  pushed  faster  over 
the  sea.  Bands  of  English  rovers,  outdriven  by  stress  of 
fight,  had  long  found  a  home  there,  and  lived  as  they  could 
by  sack  of  vessel  or  coast.  Chance  has  preserved  for  us  in 
a  Sleswick  peat-bog  one  of  the  war-keels  of  these  early 
pirates.  The  boat  is  flat-bottomed,  seventy  feet  long  and 
eight  or  nine  feet  wide,  its  sides  of  oak  boards  fastened 
with  bark  ropes  and  iron  bolts.  Fifty  oars  drove  it  over 
the  waves  with  a  freight  of  warriors  whose  arms,  axes, 
swords,  lances,  and  knives  were  found  heaped  together  in 
its  hold.  Like  the  galleys  of  the  Middle  Ages  such  boats 
could  only  creep  cautiously  along  from  harbor  to  harbor 
in  rough  weather ;  but  in  smooth  water  their  swiftness  fitted 
them  admirably  for  the  piracy  by  which  the  men  of  these 
tribes  were  already  making  themselves  dreaded.  Its  flat 
bottom  enabled  them  to  beach  the  vessel  on  any  fitting 
coast ;  and  a  step  on  shore  at  once  transformed  the  boat- 
men into  a  war-band.  From  the  first  the  daring  of  the  Eng- 
lish race  broke  out  in  the  secrecy  and  suddenness  of  the 
pirates1  swoop,  in  the  fierceness  of  their  onset,  in  the  care- 
less glee  with  which  they  seized  either  sword  or  oar. 
"  Foes  are  they,"  sang  a  Roman  poet  of  the  time,  "  fierce 
beyond  other  foes  and  cunning  as  they  are  fierce  ;  the  sea 
is  their  school  of  war  and  the  storm  their  friend ;  they 
are  sea-wolves  that  prey  on  the  pillage  of  the  world  !  " 

Of  the  three  English  tribes  the  Saxons  lay  nearest  to 


20  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

the  Empire,  and  they  were  naturally  the  first  to  touch 
the  Roman  world ;  before  the  close  of  the  third  century 
indeed  their  boats  appeared  in  such  force  in  the  English 
Channel  as  to  call  for  a  special  fleet  to  resist  them.  The 
piracy  of  our  fathers  had  thus  brought  them  to  the 
shores  of  a  land  which,  dear  as  it  is  now  to  English- 
men, had  not  as  yet  been  trodden  by  English  feet.  This 
land  was  Britain.  When  the  Saxon  boats  touched  its 
coast  the  island  was  the  westernmost  province  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  In  the  fifty-fifth  year  before  Christ  a 
descent  of  Julius  Caesar  revealed  it  to  the  Roman 
world  ;  and  a  century  after  Caesar's  landing  the  Emperor 
Claudius  undertook  its  conquest.  The  work  was  swiftly 
carried  out.  Before  thirty  years  were  over  the  bulk  of 
the  island  had  passed  beneath  the  Roman  sway  and  the 
Roman  frontier  had  been  carried  to  the  Firths  of  Forth 
and  of  Clyde.  The  work  of  civilization  followed  fast  on 
the  work  of  the  sword.  To  the  last  indeed  the  distance  of 
the  island  from  the  seat  of  empire  left  her  less  Romanized 
than  any  other  province  of  the  west.  The  bulk  of  the 
population  scattered  over  the  country  seem  in  spite  of 
imperial  edicts  to  have  clung  to  their  old  law  as  to 
their  old  language,  and  to  have  retained  some  traditional 
allegiance  to  their  native  chiefs.  But  Roman  civilization 
rested  mainly  on  city  life,  and  in  Britain  as  elsewhere 
the  city  was  thoroughly  Roman.  In  towns  such  as 
Lincoln  or  York,  governed  by  their  own  municipal  officers, 
guarded  by  massive  walls,  and  linked  together  by  a 
network  of  magnificent  roads  which  reached  from  one 
end  of  the  island  to  the  other,  manners,  language,  politi- 
cal life,  all  were  of  Rome. 

For  three  hundred  years  the  Roman  sword  secured  order 
and  peace  without  Britain  and  within,  and  with  peace  and 
order  came  a  wide  and  rapid  prosperity.  Commerce  sprang 
up  in  ports  amongst  which  London  held  the  first  rank  ; 
agriculture  flourished  till  Britain  became  one  of  the 
corn-exporting  countries  of  the  world  ;  the  mineral  re- 
sources of  the  province  were  explored  in  the  tin  mines 
of  Cornwall,  the  lead  mines  of  Somerset  or  Northumber- 
land, and  the  iron  mines  of  the  Forest  of  Dean.  But 


EARLY    ENGLAND.       449 1071.  21 

evils  which  sapped  the  strength  of  the  whole  Empire  told 
at  last  on  the  province  of  Britain.  Wealth  and  popu- 
lation alike  declined  under  a  crushing  system  of  taxation, 
under  restrictions  which  fettered  industry,  under  a  des- 
potism which  crushed  out  all  local  independence.  And 
with  decay  within  came  danger  from  without.  For 
centuries  past  the  Roman  frontier  had  held  back  the 
barbaric  world  beyond  it,  the  Parthian  of  the  Euphrates, 
the  Numidian  of  the  African  desert,  the  German  of  the 
Danube  or  the  Rhine.  In  Britain  a  wall  drawn  from 
Newcastle  to  Carlisle  bridled  the  British  tribes,  the 
Picts  as  they  were  called,  who  had  been  sheltered  from 
Roman  conquest  by  the  fastnesses  of  the  Highlands.  It 
was  this  mass  of  savage  barbarism  which  broke  upon  the 
Empire  as  it  sank  into  decay.  In  its  western  dominions 
the  triumph  of  these  assailants  was  complete.  The  Franks 
conquered  and  colonized  Gaul.  The  West-Goths  con- 
quered and  colonized  Spain.  The  Vandals  founded  a 
kingdom  in  Africa.  The  Burgundians  encamped  in  the 
border-land  between  Italy  and  the  Rhone.  The  East- 
Goths  ruled  at  last  in  Italy  itself. 

It  was  to  defend  Italy  against  the  Goths  that  Rome  in 
the  opening  of  the  fifth  century  withdrew  her  legions  from 
Britain,  and  from  that  moment  the  province  was  left  to 
struggle  unaided  against  the  Picts.  Nor  were  these  its  only 
enemies.  While  marauders  from  Ireland,  whose  inhabit- 
ants then  bore  the  name  of  Scots,  harried  the  west,  the 
boats  of  Saxon  pirates,  as  we  have  seen,  were  swarming 
off  its  eastern  and  southern  coasts.  For  forty  years  Brit- 
ain held  bravely  out  against  these  assailants;  but  civil 
strife  broke  its  powers  of  resistance,  and  its  rulers  fell 
back  at  last  on  the  fatal  policy  by  which  the  Empire  in- 
vited its  doom  while  striving  to  avert  it,  the  policy  of 
matching  barbarian  against  barbarian.  By  the  usual 
promises  of  land  and  pay  a  band  of  warriors  was  drawn 
for  this  purpose  from  Jutland  in  449  with  two  ealdormen, 
Hengest  and  Horsa,  at  their  head.  If  by  English  history 
we  mean  the  history  of  Englishmen  in  the  land  which  from 
that  time  they  made  their  own,  it  is  with  this  landing  of 
Hengest's  war-band  that  English  history  begins.  They 


22  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

landed  on  the  shores  of  the  Isle  of  Thanet  at  a  spot 
known  since  at  Ebbsfleet.  No  spot  can  be  so  sacred  to 
Englishmen  as  the  spot  which  first  felt  the  tread  of  Eng- 
lish feet.  There  is  little  to  catch  the  eye  in  Ebbsfleet 
itself,  a  mere  lift  of  ground  with  a  few  gray  cottages 
dotted  over  it,  cut  off  nowadays  from  the  sea  by  a  re 
claimed  meadow  and  a  sea-wall.  But  taken  as  a  whole 
the  scene  has  a  wild  beauty  of  its  own.  To  the  right 
the  white  curve  of  llamsgate  cliffs  looks  down  on  the 
crescent  of  Pegwell  Bay  ;  far  away  to  the  left  across  gray 
marsh-levels  where  smoke-wreaths  mark  the  site  of  Rich- 
borough  and  Sandwich  the  coast-line  trends  dimly  to- 
wards Deal.  Everything  in  the  character  of  the  spot  con- 
firms the  national  tradition  which  fixed  here  the  landing 
place  of  our  fathers  ;  for  the  physical  changes  of  the  coun- 
try since  the  fifth  century  have  told  little  on  its  main  fea- 
tures. At  the  time  of  Hengest's  landing  a  broad  inlet  of 
sea  parted  Thanet  from  the  mainland  of  Britain ;  and 
through  this  inlet  the  pirate  boats  would  naturally  come 
sailing  with  a  fair  wind  to  what  was  then  the  gravel-spit 
of  Ebbsfleet. 

The  work  for  which  the  mercenaries  had  been  hired  was 
quickly  done  ;  and  the  Picts  are  said  to  have  been  scattered 
to  the  winds  in  a  battle  fought  on  the  eastern  coast  of 
Britain.  But  danger  from  the  Pict  was  hardly  over  when 
danger  came  from  the  Jutes  themselves.  Their  fellow- 
pirates  must  have  flocked  from  the  Channel  to  their  settle- 
ment in  Thanet ;  the  inlet  between  Thanet  and  the  main- 
land was  crossed,  and  the  Englishmen  won  their  first  vic- 
tory over  the  Britons  in  forcing  their  passage  of  the  Med- 
way  at  the  village  of  Aylesford.  A  second  defeat  at  the 
passage  of  the  Cray  drove  the  British  forces  in  terror  upon 
London  ;  Init  the  ground  was  soon  won  back  again,  and  it 
was  not  till  465  that  a  series  of  petty  conflicts  which  had 
gone  on  along  the  shores  ofThanet  made  way  for  a  decisive 
struggle  at  Wippedsfleet.  Here  however  the  overthrow 
was  so  terrible  that  from  this  moment  all  hope  of  saving 
Northern  Kent  seems  to  have  been  abandoned,  and  it  was 
only  on  its  southern  shore  that  the  Britons  held  their 
ground.  Ten  years  later,in  475,  the  long  contest  was  over, 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  23 

and  with  the  fall  of  Lymne,  whose  broken  walls  look  from 
the  slope  to  which  they  cling  over  the  great  flat  of  Romney 
Marsh,  the  work  of  the  first  English  conqueror  was  done. 
The  warriors  of  Hengest  had  been  drawn  from  the  Jutes, 
the  smallest  of  the  three  tribes  who  were  to  blend  in  the 
English  people.  But  the  greed  of  plunder  now  told  on  the 
great  tribe  which  stretched  from  the  Elbe  to  the  Rhine, 
and  in  477  Saxon  invaders  were  seen  pushing  slowly  along 
the  strip  of  land  which  lay  westward  of  Kent  between  the 
weald  and  the  sea.  Nowhere  has  the  physical  aspect  of 
the  country  more  utterly  changed.  A  vast  sheet  of 
scrub,,  woodland,  and  waste  which  then  bore  the  name  of 
the  Andredsweald  stretched  for  more  than  a  hundred  miles 
from  tho  borders  of  Kent  to  the  Hampshire  Downs,extend- 
ing  northward  almost  to  the  Thames  and  leaving  only 
a  thin  trip  of  coast  which  now  bears  the  name  of  Sussex 
between  its  southern  edge  and  the  sea.  This  coast  was 
guarded  by  a  fortress  which  occupied  the  spot  now  called 
Pevensey,  the  future  landing=place  of  the  Norman  Con- 
queror ;  and  the  fall  of  this  fortress  of  Anderida  in  491 
established  the  kingdom  of  the  South-Saxons*  "  jElle 
and  Cissa  beset  Anderida,"  so  ran  the  pitiless  record  of 
the  conquerors,  "and  slew  all  that  were  therein,  nor 
was  there  afterwards  one  Briton  left."  But  Hengest  and 
jElle's  men  had  touched  hardly  more  than  the  coast, 
and  the  true  conquest  of  Southern  Britain  was  reserved 
for  a  fresh  band  of  Saxons,  a  tribe  known  as  the 
Gewissas,  who  landed  under  Cerdic  and  Cynric  on  the 
shores  of  the  Southampton  Water,  and  pushed  in  495 
to  the  great  downs  or  Gwent  where  Winchester  offered 
so  rich  a  prize.  Nowhere  was  the  strife  fiercer  than 
here ;  and  it  was  not  till  519  that  a  decisive  victory  at 
Charford  ended  the  struggle  for  the  "  Gwent "  and  set 
the  crown  of  the  West-Saxons  on  the  head  of  Cerdic. 
But  the  forest-belt  around  it  checked  any  further  advance  •, 
and  only  a  year  after  Charford  the  Britons  rallied 
under  a  new  leader,  Arthur,  and  threw  back  the  invaders 
as  they  pressed  westward  through  the  Dorsetshire  wood- 
lands in  a  great  overthrow  at  Badbury  or  Mount  Badon. 
The  defeat  was  followed  by  a  long  pause  in  the  Saxon 


24  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

advance  from  the  southern  coast,  but  while  the  Gewissas 
rested  a  series  of  victories  whose  history  is  lost  was  giving 
to  men  of  the  same  Saxon  tribe  the  coast  district  north 
of  the  mouth  of  the  Thames.  It  is  probable  however  that 
the  strength  of  Camulodunum,  the  predecessor  of  our 
modern  Colchester,  made  the  progress  of  these  assailants 
a  slow  and  doubtful  one ;  and  even  when  its  reduction 
enabled  the  East-Saxons  to  occupy  the  territory  to  which 
they  have  given  their  name  of  Essex  a  line  of  woodland 
which  has  left  its  traces  in  Epping  and  Hainaul  t  Foresst 
checked  their  further  advance  into  the  island. 

Though  seventy  years  had  passed  since  the  victory  of 
Aylesford  only  the  outskirts  of  Britain  were  won.  The 
invaders  were  masters  as  yet  but  of  Kent,  Sussex,  Hamp- 
shire, and  Essex.  From  London  to  St.  David's  Head,  from 
the  Andredsweald  to  the  Firth  of  Forth  the  country  still 
remained  unconquered  :  and  there  was  little  in  the  years 
which  followed  Arthur's  triumph  to  herald  that  onset  of 
the  invaders  which  was  soon  to  make  Britain  England. 
Till  now  its  assailants  had  been  drawn  from  two  only  of 
the  three  tribes  whom  we  saw  dwelling  by  the  northern 
sea,  from  the  Saxons  and  the  Jutes.  But  the  main  work 
of  conquest  was  to  be  done  by  the  third,  by  the  tribe 
which  bore  that  name  of  Engle  or  Englishmen  which 
was  to  absorb  that  of  Saxon  or  Jute  and  to  stamp  itself 
on  the  people  which  sprang  from  the  union  of  the 
conquerors  as  on  the  land  that  they  won.  The  Engle  had 
probably  been  settling  for  years  along  the  coast  o£ 
Northumbria  and  in  the  great  district  which  was  cut  off 
from  the  rest  of  Britain  by  the  Wash  and  the  Fens,  the 
later  East-Anglia.  But  it  was  not  till  the  moment  we 
have  reached  that  the  line  of  defences  which  had  hitherto 
held  the  invaders  at  bay  was  turned  by  their  appearance 
in  the  Humber  and  the  Trent.  This  great  river-line  led 
like  a  highway  into  the  heart  of  Britain  ;  and  civil  strife 
seems  to  have  broken  the  strength  of  British  resistance. 
But  of  the  incidents  of  this  final  struggle  we  know  nothing. 
One  part  of  the  English  force  marched  from  the  Humber 
over  the  Yorkshire  wolds  to  found  what  was  called  the 
kingdom  of  the  Deirans.  Under  the  Empire  political 


EARLY    ENGLAND.       449 — 1071.  25 

power  had  centred  in  the  district  between  the  Humber  and 
the  Roman  wall ;  York  was  the  capital  of  Roman  Britain  ; 
villas  of  rich  landowners  studded  the  valley  of  the  Ouse  ; 
and  the  bulk  of  the  garrison  maintained  in  the  island  lay 
camped  along  its  northern  border.  But  no  record  tells  us 
how  Yorkshire  was  won,  or  how  the  Engle  made  them- 
selves masters  of  the  uplands  about  Lincoln.  It  is  only 
by  their  later  settlements  that  we  follow  their  march  into 
the  heart  of  Britain.  Seizing  the  valley  of  the  Don  and 
whatever  breaks  there  were  in  the  woodland  that  then 
filled  the  space  between  the  Humber  and  the  Trent,  the 
Engle  followed  the  curve  of  the  latter  river,  and  struck 
along  the  line  of  its  tributary  the  Soar.  Here  round  the 
Roman  Ratse,  the  predecessor  of  our  Leicester,  settled  a 
tribe  known  as  the  Middle-English,  while  a  small  body 
pushed  farther  southwards,  and  under  the  name  of  "  South- 
Engle  "  occupied  the  oolitic  upland  that  forms  our  present 
Northamptonshire.  But  the  mass  of  the  invaders  seem  to 
have  held  to  the  line  of  the  Trent  and  to  have  pushed 
westward  to  its  head-waters.  Repton,  Lichfield,  and 
Tamworth  mark  the  country  of  these  western  Englishmen, 
whose  older  name  was  soon  lost  in  that  of  Mercians,  or 
Men  of  the  March.  Their  settlement  was  in  fact  a  new 
march  or  borderland  between  conqueror  and  conquered  ; 
for  here  the  impenetrable  fastness  of  the  Peak,  the  mass 
of  Cannock  Chase,  and  the  broken  country  of  Stafford- 
shire enabled  the  Briton  to  make  a  fresh  and  desperate 
stand. 

It  was  probably  this  conquest  of  Mid-Britain  by  the 
Engle  that  roused  the  West-Saxons  to  a  new  advance. 
For  thirty  years  they  had  rested  inactive  within  the  limits 
of  the  Gwent,  but  in  552  their  capture  of  the  hill-fort  oi 
Old  Sarum  threw  open  the  reaches  of  the  Wiltshire  downs 
and  a  march  of  King  Cuthwulf  on  the  Thames  made  them 
masters  in  571  of  the  districts  which  now  form  Oxford- 
shire and  Berkshire.  Pushing  along  the  upper  valley  of 
Avon  to  a  new  battle  at  Barbury  Hill  they  swooped  at 
last  from  their  uplands  on  the  rich  prey  that  lay  along  the 
Severn.  Gloucester,  Cirencester,  and  Bath,  cities  which 
had  leagued  under  their  British  kings  to  resist  this  onset, 


26  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE 

became  in  577  the  spoil  of  an  English  victory  at  Deorham, 
and  the  line  of  the  great  western  river  lay  open  to  the 
arms  of  the  conquerors.  Once  the  West-Saxons  pene- 
trated to  the  borders  of  Chester,  and  Uriconium,  a  town 
beside  the  Wrekin  which  has  been  recently  brought  again 
to  light,  went  up  in  flames.  The  raid  ended  in  a  crushing 
defeat  which  broke  the  West-Saxon  strength,  but  a  Brit- 
ish poet  in  verses  still  left  to  us  sings  piteously  the  death- 
song  of  Uriconium,  "  the  white  town  in  the  valley,"  the 
town  of  white  stone  gleaming  among  the  green  woodlands. 
The  torch  of  the  foe  had  left  it  a  heap  of  blackened  ruins 
where  the  singer  wandered  through  halls  he  had  known 
in  happier  days,  the  halls  of  its  chief  Kyndylan,  "  with- 
out fire,  without  light,  without  song,"  their  stillness  bro- 
ken only  by  the  eagle's  scream,  the  eagle  who  "  has  swal- 
lowed fresh  drink,  heart's  blood  of  Kyndylan  the  far. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ENGLISH   KINGDOMS. 

577-796. 

WITH  the  victory  of  Deorhara  the  conquest  of  the 
bulk  of  Britain  was  complete.  Eastward  of  a  line  which 
may  be  roughly  drawn  along  the  moorlands  of  Northum- 
berland and  Yorkshire  through  Derbyshire  and  the  For- 
est of  Arden  to  the  Lower  Severn,  and  thence  by 
Mendip  to  the  sea,  the  island  had  passed  into  English 
hands.  Britain  had  in  the  main  become  England.  And 
within  this  new  England  a  Teutonic  society  was  settled 
on  the  wreck  of  Rome.  So  far  as  the  conquest  had  yet 
gone  it  had  been  complete.  Not  a  Briton  remained  as 
subject  or  slave  on  English  ground.  Sullenly,  inch  by 
inch,  the  beaten  men  drew  back  from  the  land  which  their 
conquerors  had  won ;  and  eastward  of  the  border  line 
which  the  English  sword  had  drawn  all  was  now  purely 
English. 

It  is  this  which  distinguishes  the  conquest  of  Britain 
from  that  of  the  other  provinces  of  Rome.  The  con- 
quest of  Gaul  by  the  Franks  or  that  of  Italy  by  the 
Lombards  proved  little  more  than  a  forcible  settlement 
of  the  one  or  the  other  among  tributary  subjects  who 
were  destined  in  a  long  course  of  ages  to  absorb  their 
conquerors.  French  is  the  tongue,  not  of  the  Frank, 
but  of  the  Gaul  whom  he  overcame ;  and  the  fair  hair  of 
the  Lombard  is  all  but  unknown  in  Lombardy.  But  the 
English  conquest  of  Britain  up  to  the  point  which  we 
have  reached  was  a  sheer  dispossession  of  the  people  whom 
the  English  conquered.  It  was  not  that  Englishmen, 


28  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

fierce  and  cruel  as  at  times  they  seem  to  have  been,  were 
more  fierce  or  more  cruel  than  other  Germans  who  at- 
tacked the  Empire  ;  nor  have  we  any  ground  for  saying 
that  they,  unlike  the  Burgundian  or  the  Frank,  were 
utterly  strange  to  the  Roman  civilization.  Saxon  mer- 
cenaries are  found  as  well  as  Frank  mercenaries  in  the 
pay  of  Rome  ;  and  the  presence  of  Saxon  vessels  in  the 
Channel  for  a  century  before  the  descent  on  Britain 
must  have  familiarized  its  invaders  with  what  civilization 
was  to  be  found  in  the  Imperial  provinces  of  the  West. 
What  really  made  the  difference  between  the  fate  of 
Britain  and  that  of  the  rest  of  the  Roman  world  was  the  • 
stubborn  courage  of  the  British  themselves.  In  all  the 
world-wide  struggle  between  Rome  and  the  German  peo- 
ples no  land  was  so  stubbornly  fought  for  or  so  hardly 
won.  In  Gaul  no  native  resistance  met  Frank  or  Visi- 
goth save  from  the  brave  peasants  of  Britanny  and 
Auvergne,  No  popular  revolt  broke  out  against  the  rule 
of  Odoacer  or  Theodoric  in  Italy.  But  in  Britain  the 
invader  was  met  by  a  courage  almost  equal  to  his  own. 
Instead  of  quartering  themselves  quietly,  like  their  fel- 
lows abroad,  on  subjects  who  were  glad  to  buy  peace  by 
obedience  and  tribute,  the  English  had  to  make  every 
inch  of  Britain  their  own  by  hard  fighting. 

This  stubborn  resistance  was  backed  too  by  natural 
obstacles  ot  the  gravest  kind.  Everywhere  in  the  Roman 
world  the  work  of  the  conquerors  was  aided  by  the  civ- 
ilization of  Rome.  Vandal  or  Frank  marched  along  Ro- 
man highways  over  ground  cleared  by  the  Roman  axe 
and  crossed  river  or  ravine  on  the  Roman  bridge.  It 
was  so  doubtless  with  the  English  conquerors  of  Britain. 
But  though  Britain  had  long  been  Roman,  her  distance 
from  the  seat  of  Empire  left  her  less  Romanized  than  any 
other  province  of  the  West.  Socially  the  Roman  civili- 
zation had  made  little  impression  on  any  but  the  towns- 
folk, and  the  material  civilization  of  the  island  was  yet 
more  backward  than  its  social.  Its  natural  defences 
threw  obstacles  in  its  invaders'  way.  In  the  forest  belts 
which  stretched  over  vast  spaces  of  country  they  found 
barriers  which  in  all  cases  checked  their  advance  and  in 


EARLY    ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  29 

some  cases  finally  stopped  it.  The  Kentishmen  and  the 
South  Saxons  were  brought  utterly  to  a  standstill  by  the 
Andredsweald.  The  East  Saxons  could  never  pierce  the 
woods  of  their  western  border.  The  Fens  proved  im- 
passable to  the  Northfolk  and  the  Southfolk  of  East- 
Anglia.  It  was  only  after  a  long  and  terrible  struggle 
that  the  West-Saxons  could  hew  their  way  through  the 
forests  which  sheltered  the  "Grwent"  of  the  southern 
coast.  Their  attempt  to  break  out  of  the  circle  of  wood- 
land which  girt  in  the  downs  was  in  fact  fruitless  for 
thirty  years;  and  in  the  height  of  their  later  power  they 
were  thrown  back  from  the  forests  of  Cheshire. 

It  is  only  by  realizing  in  this  way  the  physical  as  well 
as  the  moral  circumstances  of  Britain  that  we  can  under- 
stand the  character  of  its  earlier  conquest.  Field  by 
field,  town  by  town,  forest  by  forest,  the  land  was  won. 
And  as  each  bit  of  ground  was  torn  away  by  the  stranger, 
the  Briton  sullenly  withdrew  from  it  only  to  turn  dog- 
gedly and  fight  for  the  next.  There  is  no  need  to  be- 
lieve that  the  clearing  of  the  land  meant  so  impossible  a 
thing  as  the  general  slaughter  of  the  men  who  held  it. 
Slaughter  there  was,  no  doubt,  on  the  battle-field  or  in 
towns  like  Anderida  whose  resistance  woke  wrath  in 
their  besiegers.  But  for  the  most  part  the  Britons  were 
not  slaughtered;  they  were  defeated  and  drew  back. 
Such  a  withdrawal  was  only  made  possible  by  the  slow- 
ness of  the  conquest.  For  it  is  not  only  the  stoutness  of 
its  defence  which  distinguishes  the  conquest  of  Britain 
from  that  of  the  other  provinces  of  the  Empire,  but  the 
weakness  of  attack.  As  the  resistance  of  the  Britons 
was  greater  than  that  of  the  other  provincials  of  Rome 
so  the  forces  of  their  assailants  were  less.  Attack  by 
sea  was  less  easy  than  attack  by  land,  and  the  numbers 
who  were  brought  across  by  the  boats  of  Hengest  or 
Cerdic  cannot  have  rivalled  those  which  followed  Theo- 
doric  or  Chlodewig  across  the  Alps  or  the  Rhine.  Land- 
ing in  small  parties,  and  but  gradually  reinforced  by 
after-comers,  the  English  invaders  could  only  slowly  and 
fitfully  push  the  Britons  back.  The  absence  of  any  joint 
action  among  the  assailants  told  in  the  same  way. 


30  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Though  all  spoke  the  same  language  and  used  the  same 
laws,  they  had  no  such  bond  of  political  union  as  the 
Franks  ;  and  though  all  were  bent  on  winning  the  same 
land,  each  band  and  each  leader  preferred  their  own  sep- 
arate course  of  action  to  any  collective  enterprise. 

Under  such  conditions  the  overrunning  of  Britain 
could  not  fail  to  be  a  very  different  matter  from  the 
rapid  and  easy  overrunning  of  such  countries  as  Gaul. 
How  slow  the  work  of  English  conquest  was  may  be  seen 
from  the  fact  that  it  took  nearly  thirty  years  to  win  Kent 
alone  and  sixty  to  complete  the  conquest  of  Southern 
Britain,  and  that  the  conquest  of  the  bulk  of  the  island 
was  only  wrought  out  after  two  centuries  of  bitter  war- 
fare. But  it  was  just  through  the  length  of  the  struggle 
that  of  all  the  German  conquests  this  proved  the  most 
thorough  and  complete.  So  far  as  the  English  sword  in 
these  earlier  days  had  reached,  Britain  had  become  Eng- 
land, a  land,  that  is,  not  of  Britons  but  of  Englishmen. 
Even  if  a  few  of  the  vanquished  people  lingered  as  slaves 
round  the  homesteads  of  their  English  conquerors,  or  a  few 
of  their  household  words  mingled  with  the  English  tongue, 
doubtful  exceptions  such  as  these  leave  the  main  facts  un- 
touched. The  keynote  of  the  conquest  was  firmly  struck. 
When  the  English  invasion  was  stayed  for  a  while  by  the 
civil  wars  of  the  invaders,  the  Briton  had  disappeared  from 
the  greater  part  of  the  land  which  had  been  his  own  ;  and 
the  tongue,  the  religion,  the  laws  of  his  English  conquer- 
ors reigned  without  a  break  from  Essex  to  Staffordshire 
and  from  the  British  Channel  to  the  Firth  of  Forth. 

For  the  driving  out  of  the  Briton  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
but  a  prelude  to  the  settlement  of  his  conqueror.  What 
strikes  us  at  once  in  the  new  England  is  this,  that  it  was 
the  one  purely  German  nation  that  rose  upon  the  wreck  of 
Rome.  In  other  lands,  in  Spain  or  Gaul  or  Italy,  though 
they  were  equally  conquered  by  German  peoples,  relig- 
ion, social  life,  administrative  order,  still  remained  Roman. 
Britain  was  almost  the  only  province  of  the  Empire  where 
Rome  died  into  a  vague  tradition  of  the  past.  The  whole 
organization  of  government  and  society  disappeared  with 
the  people  who  used  it.  Roman  roads  indeed  still  led  to 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  31 

desolate  cities.  Roman  camps  still  crowned  hill  and  down. 
The  old  divisions  of  the  land  remained  to  furnish  bounds 
of  field  and  farm  for  the  new  settlers.  The  Roman  church, 
the  Roman  country-house,  was  left  standing,  though  reft 
of  priest  and  lord.  But  Rome  was  gone.  The  mosaics, 
the  coins  which  we  dig  up  in  our  fields  are  no  relics  of  our 
English  fathers,  but  of  a  world  which  our  fathers'  sword 
swept  utterly  away.  Its  law,  its  literature,  its  manners, 
its  faith,  went  with  it.  Nothing  was  a  stronger  proof  of 
the  completeness  of  this  destruction  of  all  Roman  life  than 
the  religious  change  which  passed  over  the  land.  Alone 
among  the  German  assailants  of  Rome  the  English  stood 
aloof  from  the  faith  of  the  Empire  they  helped  to  over- 
throw. The  new  England  was  a  heathen  country. 
Homestead  and  boundary,  the  very  days  of  the  week, 
bore  the  names  of  new  gods  who  displaced  Christ. 

As  we  stand  amidst  the  ruins  of  town  or  country-house 
which  recall  to  us  the  wealth  and  culture  of  Roman 
Britain,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  conquest  which 
left  them  heaps  of  crumbling  stones  was  other  than 
a  curse  to  the  land  over  which  it  passed.  But  if  the 
new  England  which  sprang  from  the  wreck  of  Britain 
seemed  for  the  moment  a  waste  from  which  the  arts, 
the  letters,  the  refinement  of  the  world  had  fled  hope- 
lessly away,  it  contained  within  itself  germs  of  a  nobler 
life  than  that  which  had  been  destroyed.  The  base 
of  Roman  society  here  as  everywhere  throughout  the 
Roman  world  was  the  slave,  the  peasant  who  had 
been  crushed  by  tyranny,  political  and  social,  into  serf- 
dom. The  base  of  the  new  English  society  was  the 
freeman  whom  we  have  seen  tilling,  judging,  or  fight- 
ing for  himself  by  the  Northern  Sea.  However  roughly 
he  dealt  with  the  material  civilization  of  Britain  while 
the  struggle  went  on,  it  was  impossible  that  such  a 
man  could  be  a  mere  destroyer.  War  in  fact  was 
no  sooner  over  than  the  warrior  settled  down  into  the 
farmer,  and  the  home  of  the  ceorl  rose  beside  the  heap  of 
goblin-haunted  stones  that  marked  the  site  of  the  villa  he 
had  burned.  The  settlement  of  the  English  in  the  con- 
quered land  was  nothing  less  than  an  absolute  transfer  of 


32  HISTORY    OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

English  society  in  its  completest  form  to  the  soil  of  Brit- 
ain. The  slowness  of  their  advance,  the  small  numbers 
of  each  separate  band  in  its  descent  upon  the  coast,  made 
it  possible  for  the  invaders  to  bring  with  them,  or  to  call 
to  them  when  their  work  was  done,  the  wives  and  chil- 
dren, the  Iset  and  slave,  even  the  cattle  they  had  left  be- 
hind them.  The  first  wave  of  conquest  was  but  the  pre- 
lude to  the  gradual  migration  of  a  whole  people.  It  was 
England  which  settled  down  on  British  soil,  England  with 
its  own  language,  its  own  laws,  its  complete  social  fabric, 
its  system  of  village  life  and  village  culture,  its  town- 
ship and  its  hundred,  its  principle  of  kinship,  its 
principle  of  representation.  It  was  not  as  mere  pirates 
or  stray  war-bands,  but  as  peoples  already  made,  and 
fitted  by  a  common  temper  and  common  customs  to  draw 
together  into  our  English  nation  in  the  days  to  come,  that 
our  fathers  left  their  German  home-land  for  the  land  in 
which  we  live.  Their  social  and  political  organization  re- 
mained radically  unchanged.  In  each  of  the  little  king- 
doms which  rose  on  the  wreck  of  Britain  the  host  camped 
on  the  land  it  had  won,  and  the  divisions  of  the  host  sup- 
plied here  as  in  its  older  home  the  rough  groundwork  of 
local  distribution.  The  land  occupied  by  the  hundred 
warriors  who  formed  the  unit  of  military  organization  be- 
came perhaps  the  local  hundred  ;  but  it  is  needless  to  at- 
tach any  notion  of  precise  uniformity,  either  in  the  num- 
ber of  settlers  or  in  the  area  of  their  settlement,  to  such 
a  process  as  this,  any  more  than  to  the  army  organization 
which  the  process  of  distribution  reflected.  From  the  large 
amount  of  public  land  which  we  find  existing  afterwards 
it  has  been  conjectured  with  some  probability  that  the  num- 
ber of  settlers  was  far  too  small  to  occupy  the  whole  of  the 
country  at  their  disposal,  and  this  unoccupied  ground  be- 
came "  folk-land,"  the  common  property  of  the  tribe  as  at  a 
later  time  of  the  nation.  What  ground  was  actually  occu- 
pied may  have  been  assigned  to  each  group  and  each  family 
in  the  group  by  lot,  and  Eorl  and  Ceorl  gathered  round 
them  their  Iset  and  slave  as  in  their  homeland  by  the  Rhine 
or  the  Elbe.  And  with  the  English  people  passed  to  the 
shores  of  Britain  all  that  was  to  make  Englishmen  what 


EABLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  .       83 

they  are.  For  distant  and  dim  as  tlieir  life  in  that  older 
England  may  have  seemed  to  us,  the  whole  after-life  of 
Englishmen  was  there.  In  its  village-moots  lay  our  Par- 
liament ;  in  the  gleeman  of  its  village-feasts  our  Chaucer 
and  our  Shakspere  ;  in  the  pirate-bark  stealing  from  creek 
to  creek  our  Drakes  and  our  Nelsons.  Even  the  national 
temper  was  fully  formed.  Civilization,  letters,  science, 
religion  itself,  have  done  little  to  change  the  inner  mood 
of  Englishmen.  That  love  of  venture  and  of  toil,  of  the 
sea  and  the  fight,  that  trust  in  manhood  and  the  might  of 
man,  that  silent  awe  of  the  mysteries  of  life  and  death 
which  lay  deep  in  English  souls  then  as  now,  passed  with 
Englishmen  to  the  land  which  Englishmen  had  won. 

But  though  English  society  passed  thus  in  its  complete- 
ness to  the  soil  of  Britain  its  primitive  organization  was 
affected  in  more  ways  than  one  by  the  transfer.  In  the 
first  place  conquest  begat  the  King.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  English  had  hitherto  known  nothing  of  Kings  in 
their  own  fatherland,  where  each  tribe  was  satisfied  in 
peace  time  with  the  customary  government  of  village-reeve 
and  hundred-reeve  and  Ealdorman,  while  it  gathered  at 
fighting  times  under  war  leaders  whom  it  chose  for  each 
campaign.  But  in  the  long  and  obstinate  waifare  which 
they  waged  against  the  Britons  it  was  needful  to  find  a 
common  leader  whom  the  various  tribes  engaged  in  con- 
quests such  as  those  of  Wessex  or  Mercia  might  follow  ; 
and  the  ceaseless  character  of  a  struggle  which  left  few  in- 
tervals of  rest  or  peace  raised  these  leaders  into  a  higher 
position  than  that  of  temporary  chieftains.  It  was  no 
doubt  from  this  cause  that  we  find  Hengest  and  his  son 
-/Esc  raised  to  the  kingdom  in  Kent,  or  jElle  in  Sussex,  or 
Cerdic  and  Cynric  among  the  West  Saxons.  The  asso- 
ciation of  son  with  father  in  this  new  kingship  marked  the 
hereditary  character  which  distinguished  it  from  the  tem- 
porary office  of  an  Ealdorman.  The  change  was  undoubt- 
edly a  great  one,  but  it  was  less  than  the  modern  concep- 
tion of  kingship  would  lead  us  to  imagine.  Hereditary  as 
the  succession  was  within  a  single  house,  each  successive 
King  was  still  the  free  choice  of  his  people,  and  for  centu- 
ries to  come  it  was  held  within  a  people's  right  to  pass  over 


34  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

a  claimant  too  weak  or  too  wicked  for  the  throne.  In  war 
indeed  the  King  was  supreme.  But  in  peace  his  power  was 
narrowly  bounded  by  the  customs  of  his  people  and  the 
rede  of  his  wise  men.  Justice  was  not  as  yet  the  King's 
justice,  it  was  the  justice  of  village  and  hundred  and  folk 
in  town-moot  and  hundred-moot  and  folk-moot.  It  was 
only  with  the  assent  of  the  wise  men  that  the  King  could 
make  laws  and  declare  war  and  assign  public  lands  and 
name  public  officers.  Above  all,  should  his  will  be  to 
break  through  the  free  customs  of  his  people,  he  was  with- 
out the  means  of  putting  his  will  into  action,  for  the  one 
force  he  could  call  on  was  the  host,  and  the  host  was  the 
people  itself  in  arms. 

With  the  new  English  King  rose  a  new  order  of  Eng- 
lish nobles.  The  social  distinction  of  the  Eorl  was 
founded  on  the  peculiar  purity  of  his  blood,  on  his  long 
descent  from  the  original  settler  around  whom  township 
and  thorpe  grew  up.  A  new  distinction  was  now  to  be 
found  in  service  done  to  the  King.  From  the  earliest 
times  of  German  society  it  had  been  the  wont  of  young 
men  greedy  of  honor  or  seeking  training  in  arms  to  bind 
themselves  as  kt  comrades  "  to  king  or  chief.  The  leader 
whom  they  chose  gave  them  horses,  arms,  a  seat  in  his 
mead  hall,  and  gifts  from  his  hoard.  The  "comrade"  on 
the  other  hand — the  gesith  or  thegn,  as  he  was  called — 
bound  himself  to  follow  and  fight  for  his  lord.  The  prin- 
ciple of  personal  dependence  as  distinguished  from  the 
warrior's  general  duty  to  the  folk  at  large  was  embodied 
in  the  thegn.  "  Chieftains  fight  for  victory,"  says 
Tacitus  ;  "  comrades  for  their  chieftain."  When  one  of 
Beowulf s  "  comrades "  saw  his  lord  hard  bested  "  he 
minded  him  of  the  homestead  he  had  given  him,  of  the 
folk-right  he  gave  him  as  his  father  had  it ;  nor  might  he 
hold  back  then."  Snatching  up  sword  and  shield  he 
called  on  his  fellow-thegns  to  follow  him  to  the  fight. 
"  I  mind  me  of  the  day,"  he  cried,  "•  when  we  drank  the 
mead,  the  day  we  gave  pledge  to  our  lord  in  the  beer 
hall  as  he  gave  us  these  rings,  our  pledge  that  we  would 
pay  him  back  our  war-gear,  our  helms  and  our  hard 
swords,  if  need  befell  him.  Unmeet  is  it,  methinks,  that 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  35 

we  should  bear  back  our  shields  to  our  home  unless  we 
guard  our  lord's  life."  The  larger  the  band  of  such 
"  comrades,"  the  more  power  and  repute  it  gave  their 
lord.  It  was  from  among  the  chiefs  whose  war-band  was 
strongest  that  the  leaders  of  the  host  were  commonly 
chosen  ;  and  as  these  leaders  grew  into  kings,  the  number 
of  their  thegns  naturally  increased.  The  rank  of  the 
"  comrades  "  too  rose  with  the  rise  of  their  lord.  The 
king's  thegns  were  his  body-guard,  the  one  force  ever 
ready  to  carry  out  his  will.  They  were  his  nearest  and 
most  constant  counsellors.  As  the  gathering  of  petty 
tribes  into  larger  kingdoms  swelled  the  number  of  eorls 
in  each  realm  and  in  a  corresponding  degree  diminished 
their  social  importance,  it  raised  in  equal  measure  the 
rank  of  the  king's  thegns.  A  post  among  them  was  soon 
coveted  and  won  by  the  greatest  and  noblest  in  the  land. 
Their  service  was  rewarded  by  exemption  from  the  gen- 
eral jurisdiction  of  hundred-court  or  shire-court,  for  it 
was  part  of  a  thegn's  meed  for  his  service  that  he  should 
be  judged  only  by  the  lord  he  served.  Other  meed  was 
found  in  grants  of  public  land  which  made  them  a  local 
nobility,  no  longer  bound  to  actual  service  in  the  king's 
household  or  the  king's  war-band,  but  still  bound  to  him 
by  personal  ties  of  allegiance  far  closer  than  those  which 
bound  an  eorl  to  the  chosen  war-leader  of  the  tribe.  In 
a  word,  thegnhood  contained  within  itself  the  germ  of 
that  later  feudalism  which  was  to  battle  so  fiercely  with 
the  Teutonic  freedom  out  of  which  it  grew. 

But  the  strife  between  the  conquering  tribes  which  at 
once  followed  on  their  conquest  of  Britain  was  to  bring 
about  changes  even  more  momentous  in  the  develope- 
ment  of  the  English  people.  While  Jute  and  Saxon  and 
Engle  were  making  themselves  masters  of  central  and 
southern  Britain,  the  English  who  had  landed  on  its 
northernmost  shores  had  been  slowly  winning  for  them- 
selves the  coast  district  between  the  Forth  and  the  Tyne 
which  bore  the  name  of  Bernicia.  Their  progress  seems 
to  have  been  small  till  they  were  gathered  into  a  king- 
dom in  547  by  Ida  the  "  Flame-bearer"  who  found  a  site 
for  his  King's  town  on  the  impregnable  rock  of  Bam- 


86  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE 

borough;  nor  was  it  till  the  reign  of  his  fourth  son 
jEthelric  that  they  gained  full  mastery  over  the  Britons 
along  their  western  border.  But  once  masters  ot  the 
Britons  the  Bernician  Englishmen  turned  to  conquer 
their  English  neighbours  to  the  south,  the  men  of  Deira, 
whose  first  King  -/Ella  was  now  sinking  to  the  grave. 
The  struggle  filled  the  foreign  markets  with  English 
slaves,  and  one  of  the  most  memorable  stories  in  our 
history  shows  us  a  group  of  such  captives  as  they  stood 
in  the  market-place  of  Rome,  it  may  be  in  the  great 
Forum  of  Trajan  which  still  in  its  decay  recalled  the 
glories  of  the  Imperial  City.  Their  white  bodies,  their 
fair  faces,  their  golden  hair  was  noted  by  a  deacon  who 
passed  by.  "  From  what  country  do  these  slaves  come?" 
Gregory  asked  the  trader  who  brought  them.  The  slave- 
dealer  answered  "  They  are  English,"  or  as  the  word  ran 
in  the  Latin  form  it  would  bear  at  Rome  "  they  are 
Angles."  The  deacon's  pity  veiled  itself  in  poetic  humor. 
"  Not  Angles  but  Angels,"  he  said,  "  with  faces  so  angel- 
like  !  From  what  country  come  they?"  "  They  come," 
said  the  merchant  "  from  Deira."  "  De  ird  I "  was  the 
untranslatable  word-play  of  the  vivacious  Roman — "  aye, 
plucked  from  God's  ire  and  called  to  Christ's  mercy  ! 
And  what  is  the  name  of  their  king?"  They  told  him 
"jElla,"  and  Gregory  seized  on  the  word  as  of  good 
omen.  "  Alleluia  shall  be  sung  in  ^Ella's  land,"  he  said, 
and  passed  on,  musing  how  the  angel-faces  should  be 
brought  to  sing  it. 

While  Gregory  was  thus  playing  with  JElla's  name 
the  old  King  passed  away,  and  with  his  death  in  589 
the  resistance  of  his  kingdom  seems  to  have  ceased. 
His  house  fled  over  the  western  border  to  find  refuge 
among  the  Welsh,  and  JEthelric  of  Bernicia  entered 
Deira  in  triumph.  A  new  age  of  our  history  opens  in 
this  submission  of  one  English  people  to  another. 
When  the  two  kingdoms  were  united  under  a  common 
lord  the  period  of  national  formation  began.  If  a  new 
England  sprang  out  of  the  mass  of  English  states  which 
covered  Britain  after  its  conquest,  we  owe  it  to  the 
gradual  submission  of  the  smaller  peoples  to  the  su- 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          87 

premacy  of  a  common  political  head.     The  difference  in 
power  between  state  and  state  which  inevitably  led  to 
this  process  of  union  was  due  to  the  character  which  the 
conquest   of  Britain    was   now  assuming.     Up   to    this 
time   all  the  kingdoms  which  had  been  established  by 
the  invaders   had  stood  in   the  main  on   a  footing  of 
equality.     All  had  taken  an  independent  share  in  the 
work  of  conquest.     Though  the  oneness  of  a  common 
blood  and  a  common  speech  was  recognized  by  all  we 
find  no  traces  of  any  common  action  or  common  rule. 
Even  in  the  two  groups  of  kingdoms,  the  five  English 
and  the  five   Saxon  kingdoms,  which  occupied  Britain 
south  of  the  Humber,  the  relations  of  each  member  of 
the  group  to  its  fellows  seem  to  have  been  merely  local. 
It  was  only  locally  that  East  and  West  and  South  and 
North  English  were  grouped  round  the  Middle  English 
of  Leicester,  or  East  and  West  and  South  and  North 
Saxons  round  the    Middle   Saxons  about  London.     In 
neither  instance  do  we  find  any  real  trace  of  a  con- 
federacy, or  of  the  rule  of  one  member  of  the  group  over 
the  others ;  while  north  of  the  Humber  the  feeling  be- 
tween the  Englishmen  of  Yorkshire  and  the  Englishmen 
who  had  settled  towards  the  Firth  of  Forth  was  one  of 
hostility  rather   than    of  friendship.     But   this   age  of 
isolation,  of  equality,  of  independence,  had  now  come  to 
an  end.     The   progress  of  the   conquest   had  drawn  a 
sharp  line  between  the  kingdoms  of  the  conquerors.    The 
work  of  half  of  them  was  done.     In  the  south  of  the 
island  not  only  Kent  but  Sussex,  Essex,  and  Middlesex 
were  surrounded  by  English  territory,  and  hindered  by 
that  single  fact  from  all  further  growth.     The  same  fate 
had  befallen  the  East  Engle,  the  South  Engle,  the  Middle 
and  the  North  Engle.     The  West  Saxons  on  the  other 
hand  and  the  West  Engle,  or  Mercians,  still  remained 
free  to  conquer  and  expand  on  tlie  south  of  the  Humber, 
as  the  Englishmen  of  Deira  and  Bernicia  remained  free 
to  the  north  of  that  river.     It  was  plain  therefore  that 
from  this  moment  the  growth  of  these  powers  would 
throw  their  fellow  kingdoms  into  the  background,  and 
that  with  an  ever-growing  inequality  of  strength  must 


38  HISTORY    OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

come  a  new  arrangement  of  political  forces.  The  greater 
kingdoms  would  in  the  end  be  drawn  to  subject  and 
absorb  the  lesser  ones,  and  to  the  war  between  English- 
man and  Briton  would  be  added  a  struggle  between  Eng- 
lishman and  Englishman. 

It  was  through  this  struggle  and  the  establishment  of 
a  lordship  on  the  part  of  the  stronger  and  growing  states 
over  their  weaker  and  stationary  fellows  that  the  English 
kingdoms  were  to  make  their  first  step  towards  union  in 
a  single  England.  Such  an  overlordship  seemed  destined 
but  a  few  years  before  to  fall  to  the  lot  of  Wessex.  The 
victories  of  Ceawlin  and  Cuthwulf  left  it  the  largest  of 
the  English  kingdoms.  None  of  its  fellow  states  seemed 
able  to  hold  their  own  against  a  power  which  stretched 
from  the  Chilterns  to  the  Severn  and  from  the  Channel  to 
the  Ouse.  But  after  its  defeat  in  the  march  upon  Chester 
Wessex  suddenly  broke  down  into  a  chaos  of  warring 
tribes  ;  and  her  place  was  taken  by  two  powers  whose  rise 
to  greatness  was  as  sudden  as  her  fall.  The  first  of 
these  was  Kent.  The  Kentish  King  jEthelberht  found 
himself  hemmed  in  on  every  side  by  English  territory ; 
and  since  conquest  over  Britons  was  denied  him  he  sought 
a  new  sphere  of  action  in  setting  his  kingdom  at  the  head 
of  the  conquerors  of  the  south.  The  break  up  of  Wessex 
no  doubt  aided  his  attempt ;  but  we  know  little  of  the 
causes  or  events  which  brought  about  his  success.  We 
know  only  that  the  supremacy  of  the  Kentish  King  was 
owned  at  last  by  the  English  peoples  of  the  east  and  centre 
of  Britain.  But  it  was  not  by  her  political  action  that 
Kent  was  in  the  end  to  further  the  creation  of  a  single 
England  ;  for  the  lordship  which  ^Ethelberht  built  up  was 
doomed  to  fall  for  ever  with  his  death,  and  yet  his  death 
left  Kent  the  centre  of  a  national  union  far  wider  as  it  was 
far  more  enduring  than  the  petty  lordship  which  stretched 
over  Eastern  Britain.  Years  had  passed  by  since  Gregory 
pitied  the  English  slaves  in  the  market-place  of  Rome. 
As  Bishop  of  the  Imperial  City  he  at  last  found  himself 
in  a  position  to  carry  out  his  dream  of  winning  Britain  to 
the  faith,  and  an  opening  was  given  him  by  JEthelberht'fl 
marriage  with  Beicta,  a  daughter  of  the  Frankish  King 


EARLY    ENGLAND.      449 1071.  39 

Charibert  of  Paris.  Bercta  like  her  Frankish  kindred  was 
a  Christian ;  a  Christian  Bishop  accompanied  her  from 
Gaul  ;  and  a  ruined  Christian  church,  the  church  of 
St.  Martin  beside  the  royal  city  of  Canterbury,  was  given 
them  for  their  worship.  The  King  himself  remained  true 
to  the  gods  of  his  fathers  ;  but  his  marriage  no  doubt  en- 
couraged Gregory  to  send  a  Roman  abbot,  Augustine,  at 
the  head  of  a  band  of  monks  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the 
English  people.  The  missionaries  landed  in  597  in  the 
Isle  of  Thanet,  at  the  spot  where  Hengest  had  landed 
more  than  a  century  before  ;  and  ^Ethelberht  received 
them  sitting  in  the  open  air  on  the  chalk-down  above 
Minster  where  the  eye  nowadays  catches  miles  away 
over  the  marshes  the  dim  tower  of  Canterbury.  The 
King  listened  patiently  to  the  long  sermon  of  Augustine  as 
the  interpreters  the  abbot  had  brought  with  him  from 
Gaul  rendered  it  in  the  English  tongue.  "  Your  words 
are  fair,"  ^Ethelberht  replied  at  last  with  English  good 
sense,  "but  they  are  new  and  of  doubtful  meaning."  For 
himself,  he  said,  he  refused  to  forsake  the  gods  of  his 
fathers,  but  with  the  usual  religious  tolerance  of  the 
German  race  he  promised  shelter  and  protection  to  the 
strangers.  The  band  of  monks  entered  Canterbury  bear- 
ing before  them  a  silver  cross  with  a  picture  of  Christ, 
and  singing  in  concert  the  strains  of  the  litany  of  their 
Church.  "  Turn  from  this  city,  0  Lord,"  they  sang, 
"  Thine  anger  and  wrath,  and  turn  it  from  Thy  holy  house, 
for  we  have  sinned."  And  then  in  strange  contrast  came 
the  jubilant  cry  of  the  older  Hebrew  worship,  the  cry 
Avhich  Gregory  had  wrested  in  prophetic  earnestness  from 
the  name  of  the  Yorkshire  king  in  the  Roman  market- 
place, "Alleluia!  " 

It  was  thus  that  the  spot  which  witnessed  the  landing 
of  Hengest  became  yet  better  known  as  the  landing-place 
of  Augustine.  But  the  second  landing  at  Ebbsfleet  was 
in  no  small  measure  a  reversal  and  undoing  of  the  first. 
"  Strangers  from  Rome  "  was  the  title  with  which  the 
missionaries  first  fronted  the  English  king.  The  march  of 
the  monks  as  they  chaunted  theirlTolemn  litany  was  in  one 
sense  a  return  of  the  Roman  legions  who  withdrew  at  the 


40  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

trumpet-call  of  Alaric.  It  was  to  the  tongue  and  the 
thought  not  of  Gregory  only  but  of  the  men  whom  his 
Jutish  fathers  had  slaughtered  or  driven  out  that  JEthel- 
berht  listened  in  the  preaching  of  Augustine.  Canterbury, 
the  earliest  royal  city  of  German  England,  became  a 
centre  of  Latin  influence.  The  Roman  tongue  became 
again  one  of  the  tongues  of  Britain,  the  language  of  its 
worship,  its  correspondence,  its  literature.  But  more  than 
the  tongue  of  Rome  returned  with  Augustine.  Practically 
his  landing  renewed  that  union  with  the  Western  world 
which  the  landing  of  Hengest  had  destroyed.  The  new 
England  was  admitted  into  the  older  commonwealth  of 
nations.  The  civilization,  art,  letters,  which  had  fled 
before  the  sword  of  the  English  conquerors  returned  with 
the  Christian  faith.  The  great  fabric  of  the  Roman  law 
indeed  never  took  root  in  England,  but  it  is  impossible 
not  to  recognize  the  result  of  the  influence  of  the  Roman 
missionaries  in  the  fact  that  codes  of  the  customary 
English  law  began  to  be  put  in  writing  soon  after  their 
arrival. 

A  year  passed  ere  JEthelberht  yielded  to  the  preaching 
of  Augustine.  But  from  the  moment  of  his  conversion  the 
new  faith  advanced  rapidly  and  the  Kentish  men  crowded 
to  baptism  in  the  train  of  their  king.  The  new  religion 
was  carried  beyond  the  bounds  of  Kent  b}rthe  supremacy 
which  jiEthelberht  wielded  over  the  neighboring  king- 
doms. Saeberht,  King  of  the  East-Saxons,  received  a  bishop 
sent  from  Kent,  and  suffered  him  to  build  up  again  a 
Christian  church  in  what  was  now  his  subject  city  of  Lon- 
don, while  the  East-Anglian  King  Rsedwald  resolved  to 
serve  Christ  and  the  older  gods  together.  But  while 
jEthelberht  was  thus  furnishing  a  future  centre  of  spiritual 
unity  in  Canterbury,  the  see  to  which  Augustine  was  con- 
secrated, the  growth  of  Northumbria  was  pointing  it  out 
as  the  coming  political  centre  of  the  new  England.  In 
593,  four  years  before  the  landing  of  the  missionaries  in 
Kent,  JEthelric  was  succeeded  by  his  son  jEthelfrith,  and 
the  new  king  took  up  the  work  of  conquest  with  a  vigor 
greater  than  had  yet  been  shown  by  any  English  leader. 
For  ten  years  he  waged  war  with  the  Britons  of  Strath- 


EAELY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1701.  41 

clyde,  a  tract  stretching  along  his  western  border  from 
Dumbarton  to  Carlisle.  The  contest  ended  in  a  great 
battle  at  Daegsa's  Stan,  perhaps  Dawston  in  Liddesdale ; 
and  ^Ethelfrith  turned  to  deliver  a  yet  more  crushing 
blow  on  his  southern  border.  British  kingdoms  still 
stretched  from  Clyde-mouth  to  the  mouth  of  Severn ; 
and  had  their  line  remained  unbroken  the  British  resist- 
ance might  yet  have  withstood  the  English  advance.  It 
was  with  a  sound  political  instinct  therefore  that  ^Ethel- 
frith  marched  in  607  upon  Chester,  the  point  where  the 
kingdom  of  Cumbria,  a  kingdom  which  stretched  from  the 
Lune  to  the  Dee,  linked  itself  to  the  British  states  of 
what  we  now  call  Wales.  Hare  by  the  city  two  thousand 
monks  were  gathered  in  one  of  those  vast  religious  settle- 
ments which  were  characteristic  of  Celtic1  Christianity, 
and  after  a  three  days'  fast  a  crowd  of  these  ascetics  fol- 
lowed the  British  army  to  the  field.  JEthelfrith  watched 
the  wild  gestures  of  the  monks  as  they  stood  apart  from 
the  host  with  arms  outstretched  in  prayer,  and  bade  his 
men  slay  them  in  the  coming  fight.  "Bear  they  arms  or 
no,"  said  the  King,  "  they  war  against  us  when  they  cry 
against  us  to  their  God,"  and  in  the  surprise  and  rout 
which  followed  the  monks  were  the  first  to  fall. 

With  the  battle  of  Chester  Britain,  as  a  single  political 
body,  ceased  to  exist.  By  their  victory  at  Deorham  the 
West-Saxons  had  cut  off  the  Britons  of  Dorset,  Somerset, 
Devon,  and  Cornwall  from  the  general  body  of  their  race. 
By  JEthelfrith's  victory  at  Chester  and  the  reduction  of 
southern  Lancashire  which  followed  it  what  remained  of 
Britain  was  broken  into  two  several  parts.  From  this 
time  therefore  the  character  of  the  English  conquest  of 
Britain  changes.  The  warfare  of  Briton  and  Englishman 
died  down  into  a  warfare  of  separate  English  kingdoms 
against  separate  British  kingdoms,  of  Northumbria  against 
Cumbria  and  Strathclyde,  of  Mercia  against  modern 
Wales,  of  Wessex  against  the  tract  of  British  country 
from  Mendip  to  the  Land's  End.  But  great  as  was  the 
importance  of  the  battle  of  Chester  to  the  fortunes  of 
Britain,  it  was  of  still  greater  importance  to  the  fortunes 
of  England  itself.  The  drift  towards  national  unity  had 


42  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

already  begun,  but  from  the  moment  of  jEthelfrith's  vic- 
tory this  drift  became  the  main  current  of  our  history. 
Masters  of  the  larger  and  richer  part  of  the  land,  its  con- 
querors were  no  longer  drawn  greedily  westward  by  the 
hope  of  plunder  ;  while  the  severance  of  the  British  king- 
doms took  from  their  enemies  the  pressure  of  a  common 
danger.    The  conquests  of  JEthelfrith  left  him  without  a 
rival  in  military  power,  and  he  turned  from  victories  over 
the  Welsh,  as  their  English  foes  called  the  Britons,  to 
the  building  up  of  a  lordship  over  his  own  countrymen. 
The  power  of  ^Ethelberht  seems  to  have  declined  with 
old  age,  and  though  the  Essex  men  still  owned  his  suprem- 
acy, the  English  tribes  of  Mid-Britain  shook  it  off.     So 
strong  however  had  the  instinct  of  union  now  become, 
that  we  hear  nothing  of  any  return  to  their  old  isolation. 
Mercians  and  Southumbrians,  Middle -English  and  South- 
English  now  owned  the  lordship  of  the  East-English  King 
Raedwald.    The  shelter  given  by  Rsedwald  to  jElla's  son 
Eadwine  served  as  a  pretext  for  a  Northumbrian  attack. 
Fortune  however  deserted  jEthelfrith,  and  a  snatch  of 
northern  song  still  tells  of  the  day  when  the  river  Idle  by 
Hetford  saw  his  defeat  and  fall.     But  the  greatness  of 
Northumbria  survived  its  king.    In  617  Eadwine  was  wel- 
comed back  by  his  own  men  of  Deira ;  and  his  conquest  of 
Bernicia  maintained  that  union  of  the  two  realms  which 
the  Bernician  conquest  of  Deira  had  first  brought  about. 
The  greatness   of  Northumbria  now  reached  its  height. 
Within  his  own  dominions,  Eadwine  displayed  a  genius 
for  civil  government  which  shews  how  utterly  the  mere 
age  of  conquest  had  passed  away.     With  him  began  the 
English  proverb   so  often  applied  to  after  kings :    "  A 
woman  with  her  babe  might  walk  scatheless  from  sea  to 
sea  in  Eadwine's  day."    Peaceful  communication  revived 
along  the  deserted  highways ;  the   springs  by  the  road- 
side  were  marked   with   stakes,  and  a  cup  of  brass  set 
beside  each  for  the  traveller's  refreshment.     Some  faint 
traditions  of  the  Roman  past  may  have  flung  their  glory 
round  this  new  "  Empire  of  the  English;  "  a  royal  stand- 
ard of  purple  and  gold  floated  before  Eadwine  as  he  rode 
through  the  villages ;  a  feather  tuft  attached  to  a  spear, 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1701.          43 

the  Roman  tufa,  preceded  him  as  he  walked  through  the 
streets.  The  Northumbrian  king  became  in  fact  supreme 
over  Britain  as  no  king  of  English  blood  had  been  be- 
fore. Northward  his  frontier  reached  to  the  Firth  of 
Forth,  and  here,  if  we  trust  tradition,  Eadwine  founded 
a  city  which  bore  his  name,  Edinburgh,  Eadwine's  burgh. 
To  the  west  his  arms  crushed  the  long  resistance  of 
Elmet,  tho  district  about  Leeds ;  he  was  master  of  Ches- 
ter, and  the  fleet  he  equipped  there  subdued  the  isles  of 
Anglesea  and  Man.  South  of  the  Humber  he  was  owned 
as  overlord  by  the  five  English  states  of  Mid-Britain. 
The  West-Saxons  remained  awhile  independent.  But 
revolt  and  slaughter  had  fatally  broken  their  power 
when  Eadwine  attacked  them.  A  story  preserved  by 
Baeda  tells  something  of  the  fierceness  of  the  struggle 
which  ended  in  the  subjection  of  the  south  to  the  over- 
lordship  of  Northumbria.  In  an  Easter-court  which  he 
held  in  his  royal  city  by  the  river  Derwent,  Eadwine 
gave  audience  to  Eumer,  an  envoy  of  Wessex,  who 
brought  a  message  from  its  king.  In  the  midst  of  the 
conference  Eumer  started  to  his  feet,  drew  a  dagger  from 
his  robe,  and  rushed  on  the  Northumbrian  sovereign. 
Lilla,  one  of  the  King's  war-band,  threw  himself  between 
Eadwine  and  his  assassin ;  but  so  furious  was  the  stroke 
that  even  through  Lilla's  body  the  dagger  still  reached 
its  aim.  The  king  however  recovered  from  his  wound 
to  march  on  the  West-Saxons;  he  slew  or  subdued  all 
who  had  conspired  against  him,  and  returned  victorious 
to  his  own  country. 

Kent  had  bound  itself  to  him  by  giving  him  its  King's 
daughter  as  a  wife,  a  step  which  probably  marked  politi- 
cal subordination  ;  and  with  the  Kentish  queen  had  come 
Paulinus,  one  of  Augustine's  followers,  whose  tall  stoop- 
ing form,  slender  aquiline  nose,  and  black  hair  falling 
round  a  thin  worn  face,  were  long  remembered  in  the 
North.  Moved  by  his  queen's  prayers  Eadwine  promised 
to  become  Christian  if  he  returned  successful  from  Wes- 
sex ;  and  the  wise  men  of  Northumbria  gathered  to  de- 
liberate on  the  new  faith  to  which  he  bowed.  To  finer 
minds  its  charm  lay  then  as  now  in  the  light  it  threw  on 


44  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  darkness  which  encompassed  men's  lives,  the  dark- 
ness of  the  future  as  of  the  past.  "  So  seems  the  life  of 
man,  O  king,"  burst  forth  an  aged  Ealdorman  "  as  a  spar- 
row's flight  through  the  hall  when  a  man  is  sitting  at 
meat  in  winter-tide  with  the  warm  fire  lighted  on  the 
hearth  but  the  chill  rain-storm  without.  The  sparrow 
flies  in  at  one  door  and  tarries  for  a  moment  in  the  light 
and  heat  of  the  hearth-fire,  and  then  flying  forth  from 
the  other  vanishes  into  the  wintry  darkness  whence  it 
came.  So  tarries  for  a  moment  the  life  of  man  in  our 
sight,  but  what  is  before  it,  what  after  it,  we  know  not. 
If  this  new  teaching  tell  us  aught  certainly  of  these,  let 
us  follow  it."  Coarser  argument  told  on  the  crowd. 
"  None  of  your  people,  Eadwine,  have  worshipped  the 
gods  more  busily  than  I,"  said  Coifi  the  priest,  "  yet  there 
are  many  more  favored  and  more  fortunate.  Were 
these  gods  good  for  anything  they  would  help  their  wor- 
shippers." Then  leaping  on  horseback,  he  hurled  his 
spear  into  the  sacred  temple  at  Godmanham,  and  with 
the  rest  of  the  Witan  embraced  the  religion  of  the  king. 
But  the  faith  of  Woden  and  Thunder  was  not  to  fall 
without  a  struggle.  Even  in  Kent  a  reaction  against  the 
new  creed  began  with  the  death  of  JEthelberht.  The 
young  Kings  of  the  East-Saxons  burst  into  the  church 
where  the  Bishop  of  London  was  administering  the 
Eucharist  to  the  people,  crying  "  Give  us  that  white 
bread  you  gave  to  our  father  Saba,"  and  on  the  bishop's 
refusal  drove  him  from  their  realm.  This  earlier  tide  of 
reaction  was  checked  by  Eadwine's  conversion ;  but 
Mercia,  which  had  as  yet  owned  the  supremacy  of  North- 
umbria,  sprang  into  a  sudden  greatness  as  the  champion 
of  the  heathen  gods.  Its  King,  Penda,  saw  in  the  rally 
of  the  old  religion  a  chance  of  winning  back  his  people's 
freedom  and  giving  it  the  lead  among  the  tribes  about  it. 
Originally  mere  settlers  along  the  Upper  Trent,  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Mercians  on  the  Welsh  border  invited  them 
to  widen  their  possessions  by  conquest  while  the  rest  of 
their  Anglian  neighbors  were  shut  off  from  any  chance 
of  expansion.  Their  fights  along  the  frontier  too  kept 
their  warlike  energy  at  its  height.  Penda  must  have  al- 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  45 

ready  asserted  his  superiority  over  the  four  other  Eng- 
lish tribes  of  Mid-Britain  before  he  could  have  ventured 
to  attack  Wessex  and  tear  from  it  in  628  the  country  of 
the  Hwdccas  and  Magessetas  on  the  Severn.  Even  with 
this  accession  of  strength  however  he  was  still  no  match 
for  Northumbria.  But  the  war  of  the  English  people 
with  the  Britons  seems  at  this  moment  to  have  died 
down  for  a  season,  and  the  Mercian  ruler  boldly  broke 
through  the  barrier  which  had  parted  the  two  races  till 
now  by  allying  himself  with  a  Welsh  King,  Cadwallon, 
for  a  joint  attack  on  Eadwine.  The  armies  met  in  633 
at  a  place  called  Haethfeld,  and  in  the  fight  which  fol- 
lowed Eadwine  was  defeated  and  slain. 

Bernicia  seized  on  the  fall  of  Eadwine  to  recall  the  line 
of  JEthelfrith  to  its  throne  ;  and  after  a  year  of  anarchy 
his  second  son,  Oswald,  became  its  King.  The  Welsh  had 
remained  encamped  in  the  heart  of  the  north, and  Oswald's 
first  fight  was  with  Cadwallon.  A  small  Northumbrian 
force  gathered  in  635  near  the  Roman  Wall,  and  pledged 
itself  at  the  new  King's  bidding  to  become  Christian  if 
it  conquered  in  the  fight.  Cadwallon  fell  fighting  on 
the  "  Heaven's  Field,"  as  after  times  called  the  field  of 
battle  ;  the  submission  of  Deira  to  the  conqueror  restored 
the  kingdom  of  Northumbria;  and  for  nine  years  the 
power  of  Oswald  equalled  that  of  Eadwine.  It  was  not 
the  Church  of  Paulinus  which  nerved  Oswald  to  this 
struggle  for  the  Cross,  or  which  carried  out  in  Bernicia 
the  work  of  conversion  which  his  victory  began.  Pau- 
linus fled  from  Northumbria  at  Eadwine's  fall ;  and  the 
Roman  Church,  though  established  in  Kent,  did  little  in 
contending  elsewhere  against  the  heathen  reaction.  Its 
place  in  the  conversion  of  northern  England  was  taken 
by  missionaries  from  Ireland.  To  understand  the  true 
meaning  of  this  charge  we  must  remember  how  greatly 
the  Christian  Church  in  the  west  had  been  affected  by 
the  German  invasion.  Before  the  landing  of  the  English 
in  Britain  the  Christian  church  stretched  in  an  un- 
broken line  across  Western  Europe  to  the  furthest 
coasts  of  Ireland.  The  conquest  of  Britain  by  the  pagan 
English  thrust  a  wedge  of  heathendom  into  the  heart  of 


46  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

this  great  communion  and  broke  it  into  two  unequal  parts. 
On  one  side  lay  Italy,  Spain,  and  Gaul,  whose  churches 
owned  obedience  to  and  remained  in  direct  contact  with 
the  See  of  Rome,  on  the  other,  practically  cut  off  from  the 
general  body  of  Christendom,  lay  the  Church  of  Ireland. 
But  the  condition  of  the  two  portions  of  Western  Chris- 
tendom was  very  different.  While  the  vigor  of  Christi- 
anity in  Italy  and  Gaul  and  Spain  was  exhausted  in  a 
bare  struggle  for  life,  Ireland,  which  remained  unscourged 
by  invaders,  drew  from  its  conversion  an  energy  such  as 
it  has  never  known  since.  Christianity  was  received 
there  with  a  burst  of  popular  enthusiasm,  and  letters  and 
arts  sprang  up  rapidly  in  its  train.  The  science  and 
Biblical  knowledge  which  fled  from  the  Continent  took 
refuge  in  its  schools.  The  new  Christian  life  soon  beat 
too  strongly  to  brook  confinement  within  the  bounds  of 
Ireland  itself.  Patrick,  the  first  missionary  of  the  island, 
had  not  been  half  a  century  dead  when  Irish  Christianity 
flung  itself  with  a  fiery  zeal  into  battle  with  the  mass  of 
heathenism  which  was  rolling  in  upon  the  Christian 
world.  Irish  missionaries  labored  among  the  Picts  of 
the  Highlands  and  among  the  Frisians  of  the  northern 
seas.  An  Irish  missionary,  Columban,  founded  monas- 
teries in  Burgundy  and  the  Apennines.  The  canton  of 
St;  Gall  still  commemorates  in  its  name  another  Irish 
missionary  before  whom  the  spirits  of  flood  and  fell  fled 
wailing  over  the  waters  of  the  Lake  of  Constance.  For 
a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  course  of  the  world's  history 
was  to  be  changed,  as  if  the  older  Celtic  race  that  Roman 
and  German  had  swept  before  them  had  turned  to  the 
moral  conquest  of  their  conquerors,  as  if  Celtic  and  not 
Latin  Christianity  was  to  mould  the  destinies  of  the 
Churches  of  the  West. 

On  a  low  island  of  barren  gniess-rock  off  the  west  coast 
of  Scotland  an  Irish  refugee,  Columba,  had  raised  the 
famous  mission-station  of  lona.  It  was  within  its  walls 
that  Oswald  in  youth  found  refuge,  and  on  his  accession 
to  the  throne  of  Northumbria  he  called  for  missionaries 
from  among  its  monks.  The  first  preacher  sent  in  answer 
to  his  call  obtained  little  success.  He  declared  on  his  re 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  47 

turn  that  among  a  people  so  stubborn  and  barbarous  as 
the  Northumbrian  folk  success  was  impossible.  "  Was 
it  their  stubbornness  or  your  severity?  "  asked  Aidan,  a 
brother  sitting  by  ;  "  did  you  forget  God's  word  to  give 
them  the  milk  first  and  then  the  meat  ?  "  All  eyes  turned 
on  the  speaker  as  fittest  to  undertake  the  abandoned 
mission,  and  Aidan  sailing  at  their  bidding  fixed  his 
bishop's  see  in  the  island-peninsula  of  Lindisfarne. 
Thence,  from  a  monastery  which  gave  to  the  spot  its  after 
name  of  Holy  Island,  preachers  poured  forth  over  the 
heathen  realms.  Aidan  himself  wandered  on  foot, 
preaching  among  the  peasants  of  Yorkshire  and  North- 
umbria.  In  his  own  court  the  King  acted  as  interpreter 
to  the  Irish  missionaries  in  their  efforts  to  convert  his 
thegns.  A  new  conception  of  kingship  indeed  began  to 
blend  itself  with  that  of  the  warlike  glory  of  JEthelfrith 
or  the  wise  administration  of  Eadwine,  and  the  moral 
power  which  was  to  reach  its  height  in  jElfred  first 
dawns  in  the  story  of  Oswald.  For  after  times  the 
memory  of  Oswald's  greatness  was  lost  in  the  memory 
of  his  piety.  "  By  reason  of  his  constant  habit  of  pray- 
ing or  giving  thanks  to  the  Lord  he  was  wont  wherever 
he  sat  to  hold  his  hands  upturned  on  his  knees."  As  he 
feasted  with  Bishop  Aidan  by  his  side,  the  thegn,  or  noble 
of  his  war-band,  whom  he  had  set  to  give  alms  to  the 
poor  at  his  gate  told  him  of  a  multitude  that  still  waited 
fasting  without.  The  King  at  once  bade  the  untasted 
meatbelore  him  be  carried  to  the  poor,  and  his  silver  dish 
be  parted  piecemeal  among  them.  Aidan  seized  the 
royal  hand  and  blessed  it.  "  May  this  hand,"  he  cried, 
"  never  grow  old." 

Oswald's  lordship  stretched  as  widely  over  Britain  as 
that  of  his  predecessor  Eadwine.  In  him  even  more  than 
in  Eadwine  men  saw  some  faint  likeness  of  the  older 
Emperors ;  once  indeed  a  writer  from  the  land  of  the  Picts 
calls  Oswald  "  Emperor  of  the  whole  of  Britain."  His 
power  was  bent  to  carry  forward  the  conversion  of  all 
England,  but  prisoned  as  it  was  to  the  central  districts 
of  the  country  heathendom  fought  desperately  for  life. 
Penda  was  still  its  rallying-point.  His  long  reign  was 


48        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

one  continuous  battle  with  the  new  religion  ;  but  it  was 
a  battle  rather  with  the  supremacy  of  Christian  North- 
umbria  than  with  the  supremacy  of  the  Cross.  East- 
Anglia  became  at  last  the  field  of  contest  between  the  two 
powers  ;  and  in  642  Oswald  marched  to  deliver  it  from 
the  Mercian  rule.  But  his  doom  was  the  doom  of  Eadwine, 
and  in  a  battle  called  the  battle  of  the  Maserfeld  he  was 
overthrown  and  slain.  For  a  few  years  after  his  victory  at 
the  Maserfeld,  Penda  stood  supreme  in  Britain.  Heathen- 
ism triumphed  with  him.  If  Wessex  did  not  own  his  over- 
lordship  as  it  had  owned  that  of  Oswald,  its  King  threw  off 
the  Christian  faith  which  he  had  embraced  but  a  few 
years  back  at  the  preaching  of  Birinus.  Even  Deira  seems 
to  have  owned  Penda's  sway.  Bernicia  alone,  though 
distracted  by  civil  war  between  rival  claimants  for  its 
throne,  refused  to  yield.  Year  by  year  the  Mercian  King 
carried  his  ravages  over  the  north  ;  once  he  reached  even 
the  royal  city,  the  impregnable  rock-fortress  of  Barn- 
borough.  Despairing  of  success  in  an  assault,  he  pulled 
down  the  cottages  around,  and  piling  their  wood  against 
its  walls  fired  the  mass  in  a  fair  wind  that  drove  the 
flames  on  the  town.  "  See,  Lord,  what  ill  Penda  is  doing," 
cried  Aidan  from  his  hermit  cell  in  the  islet  of  Fame,  as 
he  saw  the  smoke  drifting  over  the  city,  and  a  change  of 
wind — so  ran  the  legend  of  Northumbria's  agony — drove 
back  the  flames  on  those  who  kindled  them.  But  burned 
and  harried  as  it  was,  Bernicia  still  fought  for  the  Cross. 
Oswiu,  a  third  son  of  JEthelfrith,  held  his  ground  stoutly 
against  Penda's  inroads  till  their  cessation  enabled  him 
to  build  up  again  the  old  Northumbrian  kingdom  by  a 
a  march  upon  Deira.  The  union  of  the  two  realms  was 
never  henceforth  to  be  dissolved  ;  and  its  influence  was 
at  once  seen  in  the  renewal  of  Christianity  throughout 
Britain.  East  Anglia,  conquered  as  it  was,  had  clung  to  its 
faith.  Wessex  quietly  became  Christian  again.  Penda's 
own  son,  whom  he  had  set  over  the  Middle  English,  re- 
ceived baptism  and  teachers  from  Lindisfarne.  At  last 
the  missionaries  of  the  new  belief  appeared  fearlessly 
among  the  Mercians  themselves.  Penda  gave  them  no 
hindrance.  In  words  that  mark  the  temper  of  a  man  of 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  49 

whom  we  would  willingly  know  more,  Baeda  tells  us  that 
the  old  King  only  "  hated  and  scorned  those  whom  he  saw 
not  doing  the  works  of  the  faith  they  had  received."  His 
attitude  shows  that  Penda  looked  with  the  tolerance  of  his 
race  on  all  questions  of  creed,  and  that  he  was  fighting 
less  for  heathenism  than  for  political  independence.  And 
now  the  growing  power  of  Oswiu  called  him  to  the  old 
struggle  with  Northumbria.  In  655  he  met  Oswiu  in  the 
field  of  Winwaed  by  Leeds.  It  was  in  vain  that  the 
Northumbrian  sought  to  avert  Penda's  attack  by  offers  of 
ornaments  and  costly  gifts.  "  If  the  pagans  will  not 
accept  them,"  Oswiu  cried  at  last,  "  let  us  offer  them  to 
One  that  will ; "  and  he  vowed  that  if  successful  he 
would  dedicate  his  daughter  to  God,  and  endow  twelve 
monasteries  in  his  realm.  Victory  at  last  declared  for  the 
faith  of  Christ.  Penda  himself  fell  on  the  field.  _  The 
river  over  which  the  Mercians  fled  was  swollen  with  a 
great  rain  ;  it  swept  away  the  fragments  of  the  heathen 
host,  and  the  cause  of  the  older  gods  was  lost  forever. 

The  terrible  struggle  between  heathendom  and  Chris- 
tianity was  followed  by  a  long  and  profound  peace.  For 
three  years  after  the  battle  of  Winwaed  Mercia  was 
governed  by  Northumbrian  thegns  in  Oswiu's  name.  The 
winning  of  central  England  was  a  victory  for  Irish  Chris- 
tianity as  well  as  for  Oswiu.  Even  in  Mercia  itself  heathen- 
dom was  dead  with  Penda.  "  Being  thus  freed,"  Baeda  tells 
us,  u  the  Mercians  with  their  King  rejoiced  to  serve  the 
true  King,  Christ."  Its  three  provinces,  the  earlier  Mer- 
cia, the  Middle-English,  and  the  Lindiswaras,  were  united 
in  the  bishopric  of  the  missionary  Ceadda,  the  St.  Chad  to 
whom  Lichfield  is  still  dedicated.  Ceadda  was  a  monk  of 
Lindisfarne,  so  simple  and  lowly  in  temper  that  he  trav- 
elled on  foot  on  his  long  mission  journeys  till  Archbishop 
Theodore  with  his  own  hands  lifted  him  on  horseback. 
The  old  Celtic  poetry  breaks  out  in  his  death-legend,  as 
it  tells  us  how  voices  of  singers  singing  sweetly  descended 
from  heaven  to  the  little  cell  beside  St.  Mary's  Church 
where  the  bishop  lay  dying.  Then  "  the  same  song  as- 
cended from  the  roof  again,  and  returned  heavenward  by 
the  way  that  it  came."  It  was  the  soul  of  his  brother, 


50  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  missionary  Cedd,  come  with  a  choir  of  angels  to  solace 
the  last  hours  of  Ceadda. 

In  Northumbria  the  work  of  his  fellow  missionaries  has 
almost  been  lost  in  the  glory  of  Cuthbert.  No  story 
better  lights  up  for  us  the  new  religious  life  of  the  time 
than  the  story  of  this  Apostle  of  the  Lowlands.  Born  on 
the  southern  edge  of  the  Lammermoor,  Cuthbert  found 
shelter  at  eight  years  old  in  a  widow's  house  in  the  little 
village  of  Wrangholm.  Already  in  youth  his  robust  frame 
had  a  poetic  sensibility  which  caught  even  in  the  chance 
word  of  a  game  a  call  to  higher  things,  and  a  passing  at- 
tack of  lameness  deepened  the  religious  impression.  A 
traveller  coming  in  his  white  mantle  over  the  hillside 
and  stopping  his  horse  to  tend  Cuthbert's  injured  knee 
seemed  to  him  an  angel.  The  boy's  shepherd  life  carried 
him  to  the  bleak  upland,  still  famous  as  a  sheepwalk, 
though  a  scant  herbage  scarce  veils  the  whinstone  rock. 
There  meteors  plunging  into  the  night  became  to  him  a 
company  of  angelic  spirits  carrying  the  soul  of  Bishop 
Aidan  heavenward,  and  his  longings  slowly  settled  into 
a  resolute  will  towards  a  religious  life.  In  651  he  made 
his  way  to  a  group  of  straw-thatched  log-huts  in  the 
midst  of  untilled  solitudes  where  a  few  Irish  monks 
from  Lindisfarne  had  settled  in  the  mission-station  of  Mel- 
rose.  To-day  the  land  is  a  land  of  poetry  and  romance. 
Cheviot  and  Lammermoor,  Ettrick  and  Teviotdale,  Yar- 
row and  Annan-water,  are  musical  with  old  ballads  and 
border  minstrelsy.  Agriculture  has  chosen  its  valleys 
for  her  favorite  seat,  and  drainage  and  steam-power  have 
turned  sedgy  marshes  into  farm  and  meadow.  But  to  see 
the  Lowlands  as  they  were  in  Cuthbert's  day  we  must 
sweep  meadow  and  farm  away  again,  and  replace  them 
by  vast  solitudes,  dotted  here  and  there  with  clusters  of 
wooden  hovels  and  crossed  by  boggy  tracks,  over  which 
travellers  rode  spear  in  hand  and  eye  kept  cautiously 
about  them.  The  Northumbrian  peasantry  among  whom 
he  journeyed  were  for  the  most  part  Christians  only  in 
name.  With  Teutonic  indifference  they  yielded  to  their 
thegns  in  nominally  accepting  the  new  Christianity  as 
these  had  yielded  to  the  king.  But  they  retained  their 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  51 

old  superstitions  side  by  side  with  the  new  worship  ; 
plague  or  mishap  drove  them  back  to  a  reliance  on  their 
heathen  charms  and  amulets ;  and  if  trouble  befell  the 
Christian  preachers  who  came  settling  among  them,  they 
took  it  as  proof  of  the  wrath  of  the  older  gods.  When 
some  log-rafts  which  were  floating  down  the  Tyne  for  the 
construction  of  an  abbey  at  its  mouth  drifted  with  the 
monks  who  were  at  work  on  them  out  to  sea,  the  rustic 
bystanders  shouted,  "  Let  nobody  pray  for  them  ;  let  no- 
body pity  these  men ;  for  they  have  taken  away  from  us 
our  old  worship,  and  how  their  new-fangied  customs  are  to 
be  kept  nobody  knows."  On  foot,  on  horseback,  Cuth- 
bert  wandered  among  listeners  such  as  these,  choosing 
above  all  the  remoter  mountain  villages  from  whose 
roughness  and  poverty  other  teachers  turned  aside.  Un- 
like his  Irish  comrades,  he  needed  no  interpreter  as  he 
passed  from  village  to  village  ;  the  frugal,  long-headed 
Northumbrians  listened  willingly  to  one  who  was  him- 
self a  peasant  of  the  Lowlands,  and  who  had  caught  the 
rough  Northumbrian  burr  along  the  banks  of  the  Leader. 
His  patience,  his  humorous  good  sense,  the  sweetness  of 
his  look,  told  for  him,  and  not  less  the  stout  vigorous 
frame  which  fitted  the  peasant-preacher  for  the  hard  life 
he  had  chosen.  "  Never  did  man  die  of  hunger  who 
served  God  faithfully,"  he  would  say,  when  nightfall 
found  them  supperless  in  the  waste.  "  Look  at  the  eagle 
overhead  !  God  can  feed  us  through  him  if  He  will  " — 
and  once  at  least  he  owed  his  meal  to  a  fish  that  the 
scared  bird  let  fall.  A  snowstorm  drove  his  boat  on  the 
coast  of  Fife.  "The  snow  closes  the  road  along  the 
shore,"  mourned  his  comrades  ;  "  the  storm  bars  our  way 
over  sea."  "  There  is  still  the  way  of  heaven  that  lies 
open,"  said  Cuthbert. 

While  missionaries  were  thus  laboring  among  its 
peasantry,  North umbria  saw  the  rise  of  a  number  of 
monasteries,  not  bound  indeed  by  the  strict  ties  of  the 
Benedictine  rule,  but  gathered  on  the  loose  Celtic  model 
of  the  family  or  the  clan  round  some  noble  and  wealthy 
person  who  sought  devotional  retirement.  The  most 
notable  and  wealthy  of  these  houses  was  that  of  Streone- 


52  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

shalh,  where  Hild,  a  woman  of  royal  race,  reared  her 
abbey  011  the  cliffs  of  Whitby,  looking  out  over  the 
Northern  Sea.  Hild  was  a  Northumbrian  Deborah  whose 
counsel  was  sought  even  by  kings ;  and  the  double 
monastery  over  which  she  ruled  became  a  seminary  of 
bishops  and  priests.  The  sainted  John  of  Beveiiey  was 
among  her  scholars.  But  the  name  which  really  throws 
glory  over  Whitby  is  the  name  of  a  cowherd  from  whose 
lips  during  the  reign  of  Oswiu  flowed  the  first  great  Eng- 
lish song.  Though  well  advanced  in  years,  Csedmon  had 
learned  nothing  of  the  art  of  verse,  the  alliterative  jingle 
so  common  among  his  fellows,  "  wherefore  being  some- 
times at  feasts,  when  all  agreed  for  glee's  sake  to  sing  in 
turn,  he  no  sooner  saw  the  harp  come  towards  him  than 
he  rose  from  the  board  and  went  homewards.  Once 
when  he  had  done  thus,  and  gone  from  the  feast  to  the 
stable  where  he  had  that  night  charge  of  the  cattle,  there 
appeared  to  him  in  his  sleep  One  who  said,  greeting  him 
by  name,  *  Sing,  Csedmon,  some  song  to  Me.'  '  I  cannot 
sing,'  he  answered ;  '  for  this  cause  left  I  the  feast  and 
came  hither.'  He  who  talked  with  him  answered  '  How- 
ever that  be,  you  shall  sing  to  Me.'  '  What  shall  I  sing  ?  ' 
rejoined  Csedmon.  '  The  beginning  of  created  things,' 
replied  He.  In  the  morning  the  cowherd  stood  before 
Hild  and  told  his  dream.  Abbess  and  brethren  alike  con- 
cluded '  that  heavenly  grace  had  been  conferred  on  him 
by  the  Lord.'  They  translated  for  Csedmon  a  passage  in 
Holy  Writ,  '  bidding  him,  if  he  could,  put  the  same  into 
verse.'  The  next  morning  he  gave  it  them  composed  in 
excellent  verse,  whereon  the  abbess,  understanding  the 
divine  grace  in  the  man,  bade  him  quit  the  secular  habit 
and  take  on  him  the  monastic  life."  Piece  by  piece  the 
sacred  story  was  thus  thrown  into  Csedmon's  poem.  "  He 
sang  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  of  the  origin  of  man, 
and  of  all  the  history  of  Israel ;  of  their  departure  from 
Egypt  and  entering  into  the  Promised  Land  ;  of  the  in- 
carnation, passion  and  resurrection  of  Christ,  and  of  His 
ascension  ;  of  the  terror  of  future  judgment,  the  horror 
of  hell-pangs,  and  the  joys  of  heaven." 

But  even  while  Csedmon  was  singing  the  glories  of 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  53 

Northumbria  and  of  the  Irish  Church  were  passing  away. 
The  revival  of  Mercia  was  as  rapid  as  its  fall.  Only  a  few 
years  after  Penda's  defeat  the  Mercians  threw  off  Oswiu's 
yoke  and  set  Wulfhere,  a  sou  of  Penda,  011  their  throne. 
They  were  aided  in  their  revolt,  no  doubt,  by  a  religious 
strife  which  was  now  rending  the  Northumbrian  realm. 
The  labor  of  Aidan,  the  victories  of  Oswald  and  Oswiu> 
seemed  to  have  annexed  the  north  to  the  Irish  Church. 
The  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  or  of  the  new  religious  houses 
whose  foundation  followed  that  of  Liudisfarne,  looked  for 
their  ecclesiastical  tradition,  not  to  Rome  but  to  Ireland  ; 
and  quoted  for  their  guidance  the  instructions,  not  of 
Gregory,  but  of  Columba.  Whatever  claims  of  supremacy 
over  the  whole  English  Church  might  be  pressed  by  the 
see  of  Canterbury,  the  real  metropolitan  of  the  Church  as 
it  existed  in  the  North  of  England  was  the  Abbot  of  Tona 
but  Oswiu's  queen  brought  with  her  from  Kent  the  loy- 
alty of  the  Kentish  Church  to  the  Roman  see ;  and  the  visit 
of  two  young  thegns  to  the  Imperial  city  raised  their  love 
of  Rome  into  a  passionate  fanaticism.  The  elder  of  these, 
Benedict  Biscop,  returned  to  denounce  the  usages  in 
which  the  Irish  Church  differed  from  the  Roman  as  schis- 
matic ;  and  the  vigor  of  his  comrade  Wilfrid  stirred  so 
hot  a  strife  that  Oswiu  was  prevailed  upon  to  summon  in 
664  a  great  council  at  Whitby,  where  the  future  ecclesi- 
astical allegiance  of  his  realm  should  be  decided.  The 
points  actually  contested  were  trivial  enough.  Colman, 
Aidan's  successor  at  Holy  Island,  pleaded  for  the  Irish 
fashion  of  the  tonsure,  and  for  the  Irish  time  of  keeping 
Easter :  Wilfrid  pleaded  for  the  Roman.  The  one  dis- 
putant appealed  to  the  authority  of  Columba,  the  other 
to  that  of  St.  Peter.  "  You  own,"  cried  the  King  at  last 
to  Colman,  "  that  Christ  gave  to  Peter  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  —  has  He  given  such  power  to 
Columba?"  The  bishop  could  but  answer  "  No."  "Then 
will  I  rather  obey  the  porter  of  heaven,"  said  Oswiti, 
"  lest  when  I  reach  its  gates  he  who  has  the  keys  in  his 
keeping  turns  his  back  on  me,  and  therebenone  to  open," 
The  humorous  tone  of  Oswiu's  decision  could  not  hide  its 
importance,  and  the  synod  had  no  sooner  broken  up,  than 


54 

Colman,  followed  by  the  whole  of  the  Irish-born  brethren 
and  thirty  of  their  English  fellows,  forsook  the  see  of  St 
Aidan  and  sailed  away  to  lona.  Trivial  in  fact  as  were  the 
actual  points  of  difference  which  severed  the  Roman 
Church  from  the  Irish,  the  question  to  which  communion 
Northumbria  should  belong  was  of  immense  moment  to  the 
after  fortunes  of  England.  Had  the  Church  of  Aidan 
finally  won,  the  later  ecclesiastical  history  of  England 
would  probably  have  resembled  that  of  Ireland.  Devoid 
of  that  power  of  organization  which  was  the  strength  of  the 
Roman  Church,  the  Celtic  Church  in  its  own  Irish  home 
took  the  clan  system  of  the  country  as  the  basis  of  its 
government.  Tribal  quarrels  and  ecclesiastical  controver- 
sies became  inextricably  confounded  ;  and  the  clergy,  rob- 
bed of  all  really  spiritual  influence,  contributed  no  element 
save  that  of  disorder  to  the  state.  Hundreds  of  wandering 
bishops,  a  vast  religious  authority  wielded  by  hereditary 
chieftains,  the  dissociation  of  piety  from  morality,  the 
absence  of  those  larger  and  more  humanizing  influences 
which  contact  with  a  wider  world  alone  can  give,  this  is  a 
picture  which  the  Irish  Church  of  later  times  presents  to 
us.  It  was  from  such  a  chaos  as  this  that  England  was 
saved  by  the  victory  of  Rome  in  the  Synod  of  Whitby. 
But  the  success  of  Wilfrid  dispelled  a  yet  greater  danger. 
Had  England  clung  to  the  Irish  Church  it  must  have  re- 
mained spiritually  isolated  from  the  bulk  of  the  Western 
world.  Fallen  as  Rome  might  be  from  its  older  greatness, 
it  preserved  the  traditions  of  civilization,  of  letters  and 
art  and  law.  Its  faith  still  served  as  a  bond  which  held 
together  the  nations  that  sprang  from  the  wreck  of  the 
Empire.  To  fight  against  Rome  was,  as  Wilfrid  said, 
"  to  fight  against  the  world."  To  repulse  Rome  was  to 
condemn  England  to  isolation.  Dimly  as  such  thoughts 
may  have  presented  themselves  to  Oswiu's  mind,  it  was 
the  instinct  of  a  statesman  that  led  him  to  set  aside  the 
love  and  gratitude  of  his  youth  and  to  link  England  to 
Rome  in  the  Synod  of  Whitby. 

Oswiu's  assent  to  the  vigorous  measures  of  organization 
undertaken  by  a  Greek  monk,  Theodore  of  Tarsus,  whom 
Rome  despatched  in  668  to  secure  England  to  her  sway 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449—1071.  55 

as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  marked  a  yet  more  decisive 
step  in  the  new  policy.  The  work  of  Theodore  lay 
mainly  in  the  organization  of  the  episcopate,  and  thus 
the  Church  of  England,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  is  the  work, 
so  far  as  its  outer  form  is  concerned,  of  Theodore.  Hs 
work  was  determined  in  its  main  outlines  by  the  previous 
history  of  the  English  people.  The  conquest  of  the  Con- 
tinent had  been  wrought  either  by  races  which  were  al- 
ready Christian,  or  by  heathens  who  bowed  to  the  Chris- 
tian faith  of  the  nations  they  conquered.  To  this  one- 
ness of  religion  between  the  German  invaders  of  the 
Empire  and  their  Roman  subjects  was  owing  the  preser- 
vation of  all  that  survived  of  the  Roman  world.  The 
Church  everywhere  remained  untouched.  The  Christian 
bishop  became  the  defender  of  the  conquered  Italian  or 
Gaul  against  his  Gothic  and  Lombard  conqueror,  the  medi- 
ator between  the  German  and  his  subjects,theone  bulwark 
against  barbaric  violence  and  oppression.  To  the  bar- 
barian, on  the  other  hand,  he  was  the  representative  of 
all  that  was  venerable  in  the  past,  the  living  record  of  law, 
of  letters,  and  of  art.  But  in  Britain  the  priesthood  and 
the  people  had  been  driven  out  together.  When  Theo- 
dore came  to  organize  the  Church  of  England,  the  very 
memory  of  the  older  Christian  Church  which  existed  in 
Roman  Britain  had  passed  away.  The  first  missionaries 
to  the  Englishmen,  strangers  in  a  heathen  land,  attached 
themselves  necessarily  to  the  courts  of  the  kings,  who 
were  their  earliest  converts,  and  whose  conversion  was 
generally  followed  by  that  of  their  people.  The  English 
bishops  were  thus  at  first  royal  chaplains,  and  their 
diocese  was  naturally  nothing  but  the  kingdom.  In  this 
way  realms  which  are  all  but  forgotten  are  commemorated 
in  the  limits  of  existing  sees.  That  of  Rochester  repre- 
sented till  of  late  an  obscure  kingdom  of  West  Kent,  and 
the  frontier  of  the  original  kingdom  of  Mercia  may  be 
recovered  by  following  the  map  of  the  ancient  bishopric 
of  Lichfield.  In  adding  many  sees  to  those  he  found 
Theodore  was  careful  to  make  their  dioceses  co-extensive 
with  existing  tribal  demarcations.  But  he  soon  passed 
from  this  extension  of  the  episcopate  to  its  organization. 


56  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

In  his  arrangement  of  dioceses,  and  the  way  in  which  he 
grouped  them  round  the  see  of  Canterbury,  in  his  national 
synods  and  ecclesiastical  canons,  Theodore  did  uncon- 
sciously a  political  work.  The  old  divisions  of  kingdoms 
and  tribes  about  him,  divisions  which  had  sprung  tor  the 
most  part  from  mere  accidents  of  the  conquest,  were  now 
fast  breaking  down.  The  smaller  states  were  by  this  time 
practically  absorbed  by  the  three  larger  ones,  and  of  these 
three  Mercia  and  Wessex  were  compelled  to  bow  to  the 
superiority  of  Northumbria.  The  tendency  to  national 
unity  which  was  to  characterize  the  new  England  had 
thus  already  declared  itself;  but  the  policy  of  Theodore 
clothed  with  a  sacred  form  and  surrounded  with  divine 
sanctions  a  unity  which  as  yet  rested  on  no  basis  but  the 
sword.  The  single  throne  of  the  one  Primate  at  Canter- 
bury accustomed  men's  minds  to  the  thought  of  a  single 
throne  for  their  one  temporal  overlord.  The  regular 
subordination  of  priest  to  bishop,  of  bishop  to  primate,  in 
the  administration  of  the  Church,  supplied  a  mould  on 
which  the  civil  organization  of  the  state  quietly  shaped 
itself.  Above  all,  the  councils  gathered  by  Theodore 
were  the  first  of  our  national  gatherings  for  general  legis- 
lation. It  was  at  a  much  later  time  that  the  Wise  Men 
of  Wessex,  or  Northumbria,  or  Mercia  learned  to  come 
together  in  the  Witenagemote  of  all  England.  The 
synods  which  Theodore  convened  as  religiously  repre- 
sentative of  the  whole  English  nation  led  the  way  by 
their  example  to  our  national  parliaments.  The  canons 
which  these  synods  enacted  led  the  way  to  a  national 
system  of  law. 

The  organization  of  the  episcopate  was  followed  by  the 
organization  of  the  parish  system.  The  mission-station 
or  monastery  from  which  priest  or  bishop  went  forth  on 
journey  after  journey  to  preach  and  baptize  naturally  dis- 
appeared as  the  land  became  Christian.  The  missionaries 
turned  into  settled  clergy.  As  the  King's  chaplain  became 
a  bishop  and  the  kingdom  his  diocese,  so  the  chaplain  of  an 
English  noble  became  the  priest  and  the  manor  his  parish. 
But  this  parish  system  is  probably  later  than  Theodore, 
and  the  system  of  tithes  which  has  been  sometimes 


EAKLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  57 

coupled  with  his  name  dates  only  from  the  close  of  the 
eighth  century.  What  was  really  due  to  him  was  the 
organization  of  the  episcopate,  and  the  impulse  which  this 
gave  to  national  unity.  But  the  movement  towards  unity 
found  a  sudden  check  in  the  revived  strength  of  Mercia. 
Wulfhere  proved  a  vigorous  and  active  ruler,  and  the 
peaceful  reign  of  Oswiu  left  him  free  to  build  up  again 
during  seventeen  years  of  rule  (657-675)  that  Mercian 
overlordship  over  the  tribes  of  mid-England  which  had 
been  lost  at  Penda's  death.  He  had  more  than  his  father's 
success.  Not  only  did  Essex  again  own  his  suprem- 
acy but  even  London  fell  into  Mercian  hands.  The  West- 
Saxons  were  driven  across  the  Thames,  and  nearly  all 
their  settlements  to  the  north  of  that  river  were  annexed 
to  the  Mercian  realm.  Wulfhere's  supremacy  soon  reached 
even  south  of  the  Thames,  for  Sussex  in  its  dread  of 
West-Saxons  found  protection  in  accepting  his  overlord- 
ship,  and  its  king  was  rewarded  by  a  gift  of  the  two 
outlying  settlements  of  the  Jutes — the  Isle  of  Wight  and 
the  lands  of  the  Meonwaras  along  the  Southampton  water 
— which  we  must  suppose  had  been  reduced  by  Mercian 
arms.  The  industrial  progress  of  the  Mercian  kingdom 
went  hand  in  hand  with  its  military  advance.  The  for- 
ests of  its  western  border,  the  marches  of  its  eastern  coast, 
were  being  cleared  and  drained  by  monastic  colonies, 
whose  success  shows  the  hold  which  Christianity  had 
now  gained  over  its  people.  Heathenism  indeed  still 
held  its  own  in  the  wild  western  woodlands  and  in  the  yet 
wilder  fen-country  on  the  eastern  border  of  the  kingdom 
which  stretched  from  the  "  Holland,"  the  sunk,  hollow 
land  of  Lincolnshire,  to  the  channel  of  the  Ouse,  a  wil- 
derness of  shallow  waters  and  reedy  islets  wrapped  in 
its  own  dark  mist-veil  and  tenanted  only  by  flocks  of 
screaming  wild-fowl.  But  in  either  quarter  the  new 
faith  made  its  way.  In  the  western  woods  Bishop  Ec- 
gwine  found  a  site  for  an  abbey  round  which  gathered 
the  town  of  Evesham,  and  the  eastern  fen-land  was  soon 
filled  with  religious  houses.  Here  through  the  liberality 
of  King  Wulfhere  rose  the  abbey  of  Peterborough. 
Here  too,  Guthlac,  a  youth  of  the  royal  race  of  Mercia, 


58  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

sought  a  refuge  from  the  world  in  the  solitudes  of  Crow- 
land,  and  so  great  was  the  reverence  he  won,  that  only 
two  years  had  passed  since  his  death  when  the  stately 
Abbey  of  Crowland  rose  over  his  tomb.  Earth  was 
brought  in  boats  to  form  a  site  ;  the  buildings  rested  on 
oaken  piles  driven  into  the  marsh ;  a  great  stone  church 
replaced  the  hermit's  cell  ;  and  the  toil  of  the  new 
brotherhood  changed  the  pools  around  them  into  fertile 
meadow-land. 

In  spite  however  of  this  rapid  recovery  of  its  strength 
by  Mercia  Northumbria  remained  the  dominant  state  in 
Britain  :  and  Ecgfrith,  who  succeeded  Oswiu  in  670,  so 
utterly  defeated  Wulfhere  when  war  broke  out  between 
them  that  he  was  glad  to  purchase  peace  by  the  surrender 
of  Lincolnshire.  Peace  would  have  been  purchased  more 
hardly  had  not  Ecgfrith's  ambition  turned  rather  to  con- 
quests over  the  Briton  than  to  victories  over  his  fellow 
Englishmen.  The  war  between  Briton  and  Englishman 
which  had  languished  since  the  battle  of  Chester  had 
been  revived  some  twelve  years  before  by  an  advance  of 
the  West-Saxons  to  the  south-west.  Unable  to  save  the 
possessions  of  Wessex  north  of  the  Thatnes  from  the 
grasp  of  Wulfhere,  their  king,  Cenwalh,  sought  for  com- 
pensation in  an  attack  on  his  Welsh  neighbors.  A  vie 
tory  at  Bradford  on  the  Avon  enabled  him  to  overrun 
the  country  near  Mendip  which  had  till  then  been  held  by 
the  Britons ;  and  a  second  campaign  in  658,  which  ended 
in  a  victory  on  the  skirts  of  the  great  forest  that  covered 
Somerset  to  the  east,  settled  the  west-Saxons  as  con- 
querors round  the  sources  of  the  Parret.  It  may  have 
been  the  example  of  the  west-Saxons  which  spurred  Ecg- 
frith to  a  series  of  attacks  upon  his  British  neighbors 
in  the  west  which  widened  the  bounds  of  his  kingdom. 
His  reign  marks  the  highest  pitch  of  Northumbrian  power. 
His  armies  chased  the  Britons  from  the  kingdom  of  Cum- 
bria and  made  the  district  of  Carlisle  English  ground. 
A  large  part  of  the  conquered  country  was  bestowed  upon 
the  see  of  Lindisfarne,  which  was  at  this  time  filled  by 
one  whom  we  have  seen  before  laboring  as  the  Apostle  of 
the  Lowlands.  Cuthbert  had  found  a  new  mission-station 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  59 

in  Holy  Island,  and  preached  among  the  moors  of  North- 
umberland as  he  had  preached  beside  the  banks  of  Tweed. 
He  remained  there  through  the  great  secession  which 
followed  on  the  Synod  of  Whitby,  and  became  prior  of 
the  dwindled  company  of  brethren,  now  torn  with  end- 
less disputes  against  which  his  patience  and  good  humor 
struggled  in  vain.  Worn  out  at  last,  he  fled  to  a  little 
island  of  basaltic  rock,  one  of  the  Fame  group  not  far 
from  Ida's  fortress  of  Bamborough,  strewn  for  the  most 
part  with  kelp  and  sea-weed,  the  home  of  the  gull  and 
the  seal.  In  the  midst  of  it  rose  his  hut  of  rough  stones 
and  turf,  dug  down  within  deep  into  the  rock,  and  roofed 
with  logs  and  straw.  But  the  reverence  for  his  sanctity 
dragged  Cuthbert  back  to  fill  the  vacant  see  of  Lindis- 
farne.  He  entered  Carlisle,  which  the  King  had  bestowed 
upon  the  bishopric,  at  a  moment  when  all  Northumbria 
was  waiting  for  news  of  a  fresh  campaign  of  Ecgfrith's 
against  the  Britons  in  the  north.  The  Firth  of  Forth 
had  long  been  the  limit  of  Northumbria,  but  the  Picts  to 
the  north  of  it  owned  Ecgfrith's  supremacy.  In  685  how- 
ever the  king  resolved  on  their  actual  subjection  and 
marched  across  the  Forth.  A  sense  of  coming  ill  weighed 
on  Northumbria,  and  its  dread  was  quickened  by  a  mem- 
ory of  the  curses  which  had  been  pronounced  by  the  bishops 
of  Ireland  on  its  Kings,  when  his  navy,  setting  out  a  year 
before  from  the  newly-conquered  western  coast,  swept 
the  Irish  shores  in  a  raid  which  seemed  like  sacrilege  to 
those  who  loved  the  home  of  Aidan  and  Columba.  As 
Cuthbert  bent  over  a  Roman  fountain  which  still  stood 
unharmed  amongst  the  ruins  of  Carlisle,  the  anxious  by- 
standers thought  they  caught  words  of  ill-omen  falling 
from  the  old  man's  lips.  "  Perhaps,"  he  seemed  to 
murmur,  "  at  this  very  hour  the  peril  of  the  fight  is  over 
and  done."  "Watch  and  pray,"  he  said,  when  they 
questioned  him  on  the  morrow  ;  "  watch  and  pray."  In 
a  few  days  more  a  solitary  fugitive  escaped  from  the 
slaughter  told  that  the  Picts  had  turned  desperately  to 
bay  as  the  English  army  entered  Fife  ;  and  that  Ecgfrith 
and  the  flower  of  his  nobles  lay,  a  ghastly  ring  of  corpses, 
on  the  far-off  moorland  of  Nectansmere. 


60        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

The  blow  was  a  fatal  one  for  Northumbrian  greatness, 
for  while  the  Picts  pressed  on  the  kingdom  from  the 
north  ^Ethelred,  Wulfhere's  successor,  attacked  it  on  the 
Mercian  border,  and  the  war  was  only  ended  by  a  peace 
which  left  him  master  of  Middle  England  and  free  to 
attempt  the  direct  conquest  of  the  south.  For  the  moment 
this  attempt  proved  a  fruitless  one.  Mercia  was  still  too 
weak  to  grasp  the  lordship  which  was  slipping  from 
Northumbria's  hands,  while  Wessex  which  seemed  her 
destined  prey  rose  at  this  moment  into  fresh  power  under 
the  greatest  of  its  early  kings.  Ine,  the  West-Saxon  king 
whose  reign  covered  the  long  period  from  688  to  728,  car- 
ried on  during  the  whole  of  it  the  war  which  Cen twine  had 
begun.  He  pushed  his  way  southward  round  the  marshes 
of  the  Parret  to  a  more  fertile  territoiy,  and  guarded  the 
frontier  of  his  new  conquests  by  a  wooden  fort  on  the  banks 
of  the  Tone  which  has  grown  into  the  present  Taunton. 
The  West-Saxons  thus  became  masters  of  the  whole  dis- 
trict which  now  bears  the  name  of  Somerset.  The  conquest 
of  Sussex  and  of  Ken,t  on  his  eastern  border  made  Ine  mas- 
ter of  all  Britain  south  of  the  Thames,  and  his  repulse  of 
a  new  Mercian  King  Ceolred  in  a  bloody  encounter  at 
Wodnesburh  in  714  seemed  to  establish  the  threefold  divi- 
sion of  the  English  race  between  three  realms  of  almost 
equal  power.  But  able  as  Ine  was  to  hold  Mercia  at  bay,  he 
was  unable  to  hush  the  civil  strife  that  was  the  curse  of 
Wessex,  and  a  wild  legend  tells  the  story  of  the  disgust 
which  drove  him  from  the  world.  He  had  feasted  royally 
at  one  of  his  country  houses,  and  on  the  morrow,  as  he 
rode  from  it,  his  queen  bade  him  turn  back  thither.  The 
king  returned  to  find  his  house  stripped  of  curtains  and 
vessels,  and  foul  with  refuse  and  the  dung  of  cattle,  while 
in  the  royal  bed  where  he  had  slept  with  JEthelburh  rested 
a  sow  with  her  farrow  of  pigs.  The  scene  had  no  need 
of  the  queen's  comment :  "  See,  my  lord,  how  the  fashion  of 
this  world  passeth  away ! "  In  726  he  sought  peace  in  a 
pilgrimage  to  Rome.  The  anarchy  which  had  driven  Ine 
from  the  throne  broke  out  in  civil  strife  which  left  Wessex 
an  easy  prey  to^Ethelbald,  the  successor  of  Ceolred  in  the 
Mercian  realm.  ^Ethelbald  took  up  with  better  fortune 


EAKLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  61 

the  struggle  of  his  people  for  supremacy  over  the  south. 
He  penetrated  to  the  very  heart  of  the  West-Saxon  king- 
dom, and  his  siege  and  capture  of  the  royal  town  of  Somer- 
ton  in  733  ended  the  war.  For  twenty  years  the  overlord- 
ship  of  Mercia  was  recognized  by  all  Britain  south  of  the 
H umber.  It  was  at  the  head  of  the  forces  not  of  Mercia 
only  but  of  East-Anglia,  Kent,  and  Essex,  as  well  as  of 
the  West-Saxons,  that  JEthelbald  marched  against  the 
Welsh  on  his  western  border. 

In  so  complete  a  mastery  of  the  south  the  Mercian  King 
found  grounds  for  a  hope  that  Northern  Britain  would  also 
yield  to  his  sway.  But  the  dream  of  a  single  England  was 
again  destined  to  be  foiled.  Fallen  as  Northumbria  was 
from  its  old  glory,  it  still  remained  a  great  power.  Under 
the  peaceful  reigns  of  Ecgfrith's  successors,  Aldfrith  and 
Ceol wulf,  their  kingdom  became  the  literary  centre  of 
Western  Europe.  No  schools  were  more  famous  than 
those  of  Jarrow  and  York.  The  whole  learning  of  the  age 
seemed  to  be  summed  up  in  a  Northumbrian  scholar. 
Bseda — the  Venerable  Bsede  as  later  times  styled  him — 
was  born  about  ten  years  after  the  Synod  of  Whitby  be- 
neath the  shade  of  a  great  abbey  which  Benedict  Biscop 
was  rearing  by  the  mouth  of  the  Wear.  His  youth  was 
trained  and  his  long  tranquil  life  was  wholly  spent  in  an 
offshoot  of  Benedict's  house  which  was  founded  by  his 
scholar  Ceolfrid.  Baeda  never  stirred  from  Jarrow.  "  I 
spent  my  whole  life  in  the  same  monastery,"  he  says, 
"  and  while  attentive  to  the  rule  of  my  order  and  the  ser- 
vice of  the  Church,  my  constant  pleasure  lay  in  learning, 
or  teaching,  or  writing."  The  words  sketch  for  us  a 
scholar's  life,  the  more  touching  in  its  simplicity  that  it  is 
the  life  of  the  first  great  English  scholar.  The  quiet 
grandeur  of  a  life  consecrated  to  knowledge,  the  tranquil 
pleasure  that  lies  in  learning  and  teaching  and  writing, 
dawned  for  Englishmen  in  the  story  of  Bseda.  While 
still  young  he  became  a  teacher,  and  six  hundred  monks 
besides  strangers  that  floeked  thither  for  instruction 
formed  his  school  of  Jarrow.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  how 
among  the  toils  of  the  schoolmaster  and  the  duties  of  the 
monk  Baeda  could  have  found  time  for  the  composition  of 


62  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  numerous  works  that  made  his  name  famous  in  the 
West.  But  materials  for  study  had  accumulated  in 
Northumbria  through  the  journeys  of  Wilfrid  and  Bene- 
dict Biscop  and  the  libraries  which  were  forming  at  Wear- 
mouth  and  York.  The  tradition  of  the  older  Irish  teachers 
still  lingered  to  direct  the  young  scholar  into  that  path 
of  Scriptural  interpretation  to  which  he  chiefly  owed  his 
fame.  Greek,  a  rare  accomplishment  in  the  West,  came 
to  him  from  the  school  which  the  Greek  Archbishop 
Theodore  founded  beneath  the  walls  of  Canterbury.  His 
skill  in  the  ecclesiastical  chant  was  derived  from  a  Roman 
cantor  whom  Pope  Vitalian  sent  in  the  train  of  Benedict 
Biscop.  Little  by  little  the  young  scholar  thus  made  him- 
self master  of  the  whole  range  of  the  science  of  his  time  : 
he  became,  as  Burke  rightly  styled  him,  "  the  father  of 
English  learning."  The  tradition  of  the  older  classic 
culture  was  first  revived  for  England  in  his  quotations  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  of  Seneca  and  Cicero,  of  Lucretius 
and  Ovid.  Virgil  cast  over  him  the  same  spell  that  he 
cast  over  Dante ;  verses  from  the  ^Eneid  break  his  nar- 
ratives of  martyrdoms,  and  the  disciple  ventures  on  the 
track  of  the  great  master  in  a  little  eclogue  descriptive 
of  the  approach  of  spring.  His  work  was  done  with  small 
aid  from  others.  "  I  am  my  own  secretary,"  he  writes ; 
"  I  make  my  own  notes.  I  am  my  own  librarian."  But 
forty-five  works  remained  after  his  death  to  attest  his 
prodigious  industry.  In  his  own  eyes  and  those  of  his 
contemporaries  the  most  important  among  these  were  the 
commentaries  and  homilies  upon  various  books  of  the 
Bible  which  he  had  drawn  from  the  writings  of  the 
Fathers.  But  he  was  far  from  confining  himself  to  the- 
ology. In  treatises  compiled  as  text-books  for  his  scholars 
Baeda  threw  together  all  that  the  world  had  then  accu- 
mulated in  astronomy  and  meteorology,  in  physics  and 
music,  in  philosophy,  grammar,  rhetoric,  arithmetic, 
medicine.  But  the  encyclopaedic  character  of  his  re- 
searches left  him  in  heart  a  simple  Englishman.  He 
loved  his  own  English  tongue,  he  was  skilled  in  English 
song,  his  last  work  was  a  translation  into  English  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John,  and  almost  the  last  words  that  broke 
from  his  lips  were  some  English  rimes  upon  death. 


BAELY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          63 

But  the  noblest  proof  of  his  love  of  England  lies  in  the 
work  which  immortalizes  his  name.  In  his  "  Ecclesias- 
tical History  of  the  English  Nation,"  Bseda  was  at  once 
the  founder  of  mediaeval  history  and  the  first  English  his- 
torian. All  that  we  really  know  of  the  century  and  a 
half  that  follows  the  landing  of  Augustine  we  know  from 
him.  Wherever  his  ovvn  personal  observation  extended, 
the  story  is  told  with  admirable  detail  and  force.  He  is 
hardly  less  full  or  accurate  in  the  portions  which  he  owed 
to  his  Kentish  friends,  Alcwine  and  Nothelm.  What  he 
owed  to  no  informant  was  his  exquisite  faculty  of  story- 
telling, and  yet  no  story  of  his  own  telling  is  so  touching 
us  the  story  of  his  death.  Two  week  before  the  Easter 
of  735  the  old  man  was  seized  with  an  extreme  weakness 
and  loss  of  breath.  He  still  preserved  however  his  usual 
pleasantness  and  gay  good-humor,  and  in  spite  of  pro- 
longed sleeplessness  continued  his  lectures  to  the  pupils 
about  him.  Verses  of  his  own  English  tongue  broke  from 
time  to  time  from  the  master's  lip — rude  rimes  that  told 
how  before  the  "  need-fare,"  Death's  stern  "  must  go," 
none  can  enough  bethink  him  what  is  to  be  his  doom  for 
good  or  ill.  The  tears  of  Bseda's  scholars  mingled  with 
his  song.  "  We  never  read  without  weeping,"  writes  one 
of  them.  So  the  days  rolled  on  to  Ascension-tide,  and 
still  master  and  pupils  toiled  at  their  work,  for  Bseda 
longed  to  bring  to  an  end  his  version  of  St.  John's  Gospel 
into  the  English  tongue  and  his  extracts  from  Bishop 
Isidore.  "  I  don't  want  my  boys  to  read  a  lie,"  he  an- 
swered those  who  would  have  had  him  rest,  "  or  to  work 
to  no  purpose  after  I  am  gone."  A  few  days  before 
Ascension-tide  his  sickness  grew  upon  him,  but  he  spent 
the  whole  day  in  teaching,  only  saying  cheerfully  to  his 
scholars,  "  Learn  with  what  speed  you  may ;  I  know  not 
how  long  I  may  last."  The  dawn  broke  on  another  sleep- 
less night,  and  again  the  old  man  called  his  scholars  round 
him  and  bade  them  write.  "  There  is  still  a  chapter 
wanting,"  said  the  scribe,  as  the  morning  drew  on,  "  and 
it  is  hard  for  thee  to  question  thyself  any  longer."  "  It  is 
easily  done,"  said  Baeda ;  "  take  thy  pen  and  write 
quickly."  Amid  tears  and  farewells  the  day  wore  on  to 


64  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

eventide.  "  There  is  yet  one  sentence  unwritten,  dear 
master,"  said  the  boy.  "  Write  it  quickly,"  bade  the 
dying  man.  "  It  is  finished  now,"  said  the  little  scribe  at 
last.  "  You  speak  truth,"  said  the  dying  man  ;  "  all  is 
finished  now."  Placed  upon  the  pavement,  his  head 
supported  in  his  scholar's  arms,  his  faced  turned  to  the 
spot  where  he  was  wont  to  pray,  JBseda  chanted  the  sol- 
emn "  Glory  to  God."  As  his  voice  reached  the  close  of 
his  song  he  passed  quietly  away. 

First  among  English  scholars,  first  among  English  theo- 
logians, first  among  English  historians,  it  is  in  the  monk 
of  Jarrow  that  English  literature  strikes  its  roots.  In 
the  six  hundred  scholars  who  gathered  round  him  for  in- 
struction he  is  the  father  of  our  national  education.  In 
his  physical  treatises  he  is  the  first  figure  to  which  our 
science  looks  back.  But  the  quiet  tenor  of  his  scholar's 
life  was  broken  by  the  growing  anarchy  of  Northumbria, 
and  by  threats  of  war  from  its  Mercian  rival.  At  last 
^Ethelbald  marched  on  a  state  which  seemed  exhausted 
by  civil  discord  and  ready  for  submission  to  his  arms. 
But  its  king  Eadberht  showed  himself  worthy  of  the 
kings  that  had  gone  before  him,  and  in  740  he  threw 
back  JEthelbald's  attack  in  a  repulse  which  not  only 
ruined  the  Mercian  ruler's  hopes  of  northern  conquest 
but  loosened  his  hold  on  the  south.  Already  goaded  to 
revolt  by  exactions,  the  West-Saxons  were  roused  to  a 
fresh  struggle  for  independence,  and  after  twelve  years 
of  continued  outbreaks  the  whole  people  mustered  at 
Burford  under  the  golden  dragon  of  their  race.  The 
fight  was  a  desperate  one,  but  a  sudden  panic  seized  the 
Mercian  King.  He  fled  from  the  field,  and  a  decisive 
victory  freed  Wessex  from  the  Mercian  yoke.  Four 
years  later,  in  757,  its  freedom  was  maintained  by  a  new 
victory  of  Secandun  ;  but  amidst  the  rout  of  his  host 
vEthelbald  redeemed  the  one  hour  of  shame  that  had 
tarnished  his  glory ;  he  refused  to  fly,  and  fell  fighting 
on  the  field. 

But  though  Eadberht  might  beat  back  the  inroads  of 
the  Mercians  and  even  conquer  Strathclyde,  before  the 
anarchy  of  his  own  kingdom  he  could  only  fling  down 


EAELY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  65 

his  sceptre  and  seek  a  refuge  in  the  cloister  of  Lindis- 
farne.  From  the  death  of  Bseda  the  history  of  Northum- 
bria  became  in  fact  little  more  than  a  wild  story  of  law- 
lessness and  bloodshed.  King  after  king  was  swept  away 
by  treason  and  revolt,  the  country  fell  into  the  hands  of 
its  turbulent  nobles,  its  very  fields  lay  waste,  and  the 
land  was  scourged  by  famine  and  plague.  An  anarchy 
almost  as  complete  fell  on  Wessex  after  the  recovery  of 
its  freedom.  Only  in  Mid-England  was  there  any  sign 
of  order  and  settled  rule.  The  two  crushing  defeats  at 
Burford  and  Secandun,  though  they  had  brought  about 
revolts  which  stripped  Mercia  of  all  the  conquests  it  had 
made,  were  far  from  having  broken  the  Mercian  power. 
Under  the  long  reign  of  Offa,  which  went  on  from  755 
to  796,  it  rose  again  to  all  but  its  old  dominion.  Since 
the  dissolution  of  the  temporary  alliance  which  Penda 
formed  with  the  Welsh  King  Cadxvallon  the  war  with 
the  Britons  in  the  west  had  been  the  one  great  hindrance 
to  the  progress  of  Mercia.  But  under  Offa  Mercia 
braced  herself  to  the  completion  of  her  British  con- 
quests. Beating  back  the  Welsh  from  Hereford,  and 
carrying  his  own  ravages  into  the  heart  of  Wales,  Offa 
in  779  drove  the  King  of  Powys  from  his  capital,  which 
changed  its  old  name  of  Pengwern  for  the  significant 
English  title  of  the  Town  in  the  Scrub  or  Bush,  Scrob- 
besbyryg,  Shrewsbury.  Experience  however  had  taught 
the  Mercians  the  worthlessness  of  raids  like  these  and 
Offa  resolved  to  create  a  military  border  by  planting  a 
settlement  of  Englishmen  between  the  Severn,  which  had 
till  then  served  as  the  western  boundary  of  the  English 
race,  and  the  huge  "  Offa's  Dyke  "  which  he  drew  from 
the  mouth  of  Wye  to  that  of  Dee.  Here,  as  in  the  later 
conquests  of  the  West-Saxons,  the  old  plan  of  extermina- 
tion was  definitely  abandoned  and  the  Welsh  who  chose 
to  remain  dwelled  undisturbed  among  their  English  con- 
querors. From  these  conquests  over  the  Britons  Offa 
turned  to  build  up  again  the  realm  which  had  been  shat- 
tered at  Secandun.  But  his  progress  was  slow.  A  re- 
conquest  of  Kent  in  774  woke  anew  the  jealousy  of  the 
West-Saxons  ;  and  though  Offa  repulsed  their  attack  at 

5 


66  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Bensington  in  777  the  victory  was  followed  by  several 
years  of  inaction.  It  was  not  till  Wessex  was  again 
weakened  by  fresh  anarchy  that  he  was  able  to  seize 
East  Anglia  and  restore  his  realm  to  its  old  bounds  under 
Wulfhere.  Further  he  could  not  go.  A  Kentish  revolt 
occupied  him  till  his  death  in  796,  and  his  successor 
Cenwulf  did  little  but  preserve  the  realm  he  bequeathed 
him.  At  the  close  of  the  eight  century  the  drift  of  the 
English  peoples  towards  a  national  unity  was  in  fact 
utterly  arrested.  The  work  of  Northumbria  had  been 
foiled  by  the  resistance  of  Mercia ;  the  effort  of  Mercia 
had  broken  down  before  the  resistance  of  Wessex.  A 
threefold  division  seemed  to  have  stamped  itself  upon 
the  land  ;  and  so  complete  was  the  balance  of  power  be- 
tween the  three  realms  which  parted  it  that  no  subjec- 
tion of  one  to  the  other  seemed  likely  to  fuse  the  English 
tribes  into  an  English  people. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WESSEX   AND   THE   NORTHMEN. 

796-947. 

THE  union  which  each  English  kingdom  in  turn  had 
failed  to  bring  about  was  brought  about  by  the  pressure 
of  the  Northmen.  The  dwellers  in  the  isles  of  the  Baltic 
or  on  either  side  of  the  Scandinavian  peninsula  had  lain 
hidden  till  now  from  Western  Christendom,  waging  their 
battle  for  existence  with  a  stern  climate,  a  barren  soil, 
and  stormy  seas.  It  was  this  hard  fight  for  life  that  left 
its  stamp  on  the  temper  of  Dane,  Swede,  or  Norwegian 
alike,  that  gave  them  their  defiant  energy,  their  ruthless 
daring,  their  passion  for  freedom  and  hatred  of  settled 
rule.  Forays  and  plunder  raids  over  sea  eked  out  their 
scanty  livelihood,  and  at  the  close  of  the  eighth  century 
these  raids  found  a  wider  sphere  than  the  waters  of  the 
northern  seas.  Tidings  of  the  wealth  garnered  in  the 
abbeys  and  towns  of  the  new  Christendom  which  had 
risen  from  the  wreck  of  Rome  drew  the  pirates  slowly 
southwards  to  the  coasts  of  Northern  Gaul ;  and  just  be- 
fore Offa's  death  their  boats  touched  the  shores  of  Brit- 
ain. To  men  of  that  day  it  must  have  seemed  as  though 
the  world  had  gone  back  three  hundred  years.  The 
same  northern  fiords  poured  forth  their  pirate-fleets  as  in 
the  days  of  Hengest  or  Cerdic.  There  was  the  same 
wild  panic  as  the  black  boats  of  the  invaders  struck 
inland  along  the  river-reaches  or  moored  round  the  river 
isles,  the  same  sights  of  horror,  firing  of  homesteads, 
slaughter  of  men,  women  driven  off  to  slavery  or  shame, 
children  tossed  on  pikes  or  sold  in  the  market-place,  as 

(67) 


68  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

when  the  English  themselves  had  attacked  Britain. 
Christian  priests  were  again  slain  at  the  altar  by  wor- 
shippers of  Woden;  letters,  arts,  religion,  government 
disappeared  before  these  Northmen  as  before  the  North- 
men of  three  centuries  before. 

In  794  a  pirate  band  plundered  the  monasteries  of  Jar- 
row  and  Holy  Island,  arid  the  presence  of  the  freebooters 
soon  told  on  the  political  balance  of  the  English  realms. 
A  great  revolution  was  going  on  in  the  south,  where 
Mercia  was  torn  by  civil  wars  which  followed  on  Cen- 
wulf 's  death  while  the  civil  strife  of  the  West-Saxons 
was  hushed  by  a  new  king,  Ecgberht.  In  Offa's  days 
Ecgberht  had  failed  in  his  claim  of  the  crown  of  Wessex 
and  had  been  driven  to  fly  for  refuge  to  the  court  of  the 
Franks.  He  remained  there  through  the  memorable  year 
during  which  Charles  the  Great  restored  the  Empire  of 
the  West,  and  returned  in  802  to  be  quietly  welcomed 
as  King  by  the  West-Saxon  people.  A  march  into  the 
heart  of  Cornwall  and  the  conquest  of  this  last  fragment 
of  the  British  kingdom  in  the  south-west  freed  his  hands 
for  a  strife  with  Mercia  which  broke  out  in  825  when 
the  Mercian  King  Beornwulf  marched  into  the  heart  of 
Wiltshire.  A  victory  of  Ecgberht  at  Ellandun  gave  all 
England  south  of  Thames  to  the  West-Saxons  and  the 
defeat  of  Beornwulf  spurred  the  men  of  East-Anglia  to 
rise  in  a  desperate  revolt  against  Mercia.  Two  great 
overthrows  at  their  hands  had  already  spent  its  strength 
when  Ecgberht  crossed  the  Thames  in  827,  and  the  realm 
of  Penda  and  Offa  bowed  without  a  struggle  to  its  con- 
queror. But  Ecgberht  had  wider  aims  than  those  of 
supremacy  over  Mercia  alone.  The  dream  of  a  union  of 
all  England  drew  him  to  the  north.  Northumbria  was 
still  strong  ;  in  learning  and  arts  it  stood  at  the  head  of 
the  English  race ;  and  under  a  king  like  Eadberht  it 
would  have  withstood  Ecgberht  as  resolutely  as  it  had 
withstood  ^Ethebald.  But  the  ruin  of  Jarrow  and  Holy 
Island  had  cast  on  it  a  spell  of  terror.  Torn  by  civil 
strife,  and  desperate  of  finding  in  itself  the  union  needed 
to  meet  the  Northmen,  Northumbria  sought  union  and 
deliverance  in  subjection  to  a  foreign  master.  Its  thegns 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  69 

met  Ecgberht  in  Derbyshire,  and  owned  the  supremacy 
of  Wessex. 

With  the  submission  of  Northumbria  the  work  which 
Oswiu  and  ^Ethelbald  has  failed  to  do  was  done,  and  the 
whole  English  race  was  for  the  first  time  knit  together 
under  a  single  rule.  The  union  came  not  a  moment  too 
soon.  Had  the  old  severance  of  people  from  people,  the 
old  civil  strife  within  each  separate  realm  gone  on  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  the  attacks  of  the  Northmen  could  have 
been  withstood.  They  were  already  settled  in  Ireland ; 
and  from  Ireland  a  northern  host  landed  in  836  at  Char- 
mouth  in  Dorsetshire  strong  enough  to  drive  Ecgberht, 
when  he  hastened  to  meet  them,  from  the  field.  His 
victory  the  year  after  at  Hengestdun  won  a  little  rest  for 
the  land ;  but  JEthelwulf  who  mounted  the  throne  on 
Ecgberht's  death  in  839  had  to  face  an  attack  which  was 
only  beaten  off  by  years  of  hard  fighting.  JEthelwulf 
fought  bravely  in  defence  of  his  realm  ;  in  his  defeat  at 
Charmouth  as  in  a  final  victory  at  Aclea  in  851  he  led  his 
troops  in  person  against  the  sea-robbers ;  and  his  success 
won  peace  for  the  land  through  the  short  and  uneventful 
reigns  of  his  sons  ^Ethelbald  and  ^Ethelberht.  But  the 
northern  storm  burst  in  full  force  upon  England  when  a 
third  son,  JEthelred,  followed  his  brothers  on  the  throne. 
The  Northmen  were  now  settled  on  the  coast  of  Ireland 
and  the  coast  of  Gaul ;  they  were  masters  of  the  sea ;  and 
from  west  and  east  alike  they  closed  upon  Britain.  While 
one  host  from  Ireland  fell  on  the  Scot  kingdom  north 
of  the  Firth  of  Forth,  another  from  Scandinavia  landed 
in  866  on  the  coast  of  East  Anglia  under  Hubba  and 
marched  the  next  year  upon  York.  A  victory  over  two 
claimants  of  its  crown  gave  the  pirates  Northumbria; 
and  their  two  armies  united  at  Nottingham  in  868  for  an 
attack  on  the  Mercian  realm.  Mercia  was  saved  by  a 
march  of  King  JEthelred  to  Nottingham,  but  the  peace 
he  made  there  with  the  Northmen  left  them  leisure  to 
prepare  for  an  invasion  of  East-Anglia,  whose  under^ 
King,  Eadmund,  brought  prisoner  before  their  leaders, 
was  bound  to  a  tree  and  shot  to  death  with  arrows.  His 
martyrdom  by  the  heathen  made  Eadmund  the  St.  Sebas- 


70  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tian  of  English  legend  ;  in  later  da}Ts  his  figure  gleamed 
from  the  pictured  windows  of  every  church  along  the 
eastern  coast,  and  the  stately  Abbey  of  St.  Edmunds- 
bury  rose  over  his  relics.  With  him  ended  the  line 
of  East-Anglian  under-kings,  for  his  kingdom  was  not 
only  conquered  but  divided  among  the  soldiers  and  the 
pirate  host,  and  their  leader  Guthrum  assumed  its  crown. 
Then  the  Northmen  turned  to  the  richer  spoil  of  the 
great  abbeys  of  the  Fen.  Peterborough,  Crowland, 
Ely  went  up  in  flames,  and  their  monks  fled  or  were  slain 
among  the  ruins.  Mercia,  though  still  spared  from  actual 
conquest,  cowered  panic-stricken  before  the  Northmen, 
and  by  payment  of  tribute  owned  them  as  its  overlords. 
In  five  years  the  work  of  Ecgberht  had  been  undone, 
and  England  north  of  the  Thames  had  been  torn  from  the 
overlordship  of  Wessex.  So  rapid  a  change  could  only 
have  been  made  possible  by  the  temper  of  the  conquered 
kingdoms.  To  them  the  conquest  was  simply  their  trans- 
fer from  one  overlord  to  another,  and  it  may  be  that  in 
all  there  were  men  who  preferred  the  overlordship  of  the 
Northman  to  the  overlordship  of  the  West-Saxon.  But 
the  loss  of  the  subject  kingdoms  left  Wessex  face  to  face 
with  the  invaders.  The  time  had  now  come  for  it  to  fight, 
not  for  supremacy,  but  for  life.  As  yet  the  land  seemed 
paralyzed  by  terror.  With  the  exception  of  his  one 
march  on  Nottingham,  King  ^Eth  el  red  had  done  nothing 
to  save  the  under-kingdoms  from  the  wreck.  But  the 
pirates  no  sooner  pushed  up  Thames  to  Reading  in  871 
than  the  West-Saxons,  attacked  on  their  own  soil,  turned 
fiercely  at  bay.  A  desperate  attack  drove  the  Northmen 
from  Ashdown  on  the  heights  that  overlooked  the  Vale 
of  White  Horse,  but  their  camp  in  the  tongue  of  land 
between  the  Kerinet  and  Thames  proved  impregnable. 
./Ethelred  died  in  the  midst  of  the  struggle,  and  his 
brother  JElfred,  who  now  became  king,  bought  the  with- 
drawal of  the  pirates  and  a  few  years'  breathing-space 
for  his  realm.  It  was  easy  for  the  quick  eye  of  ^Elfred 
to  see  that  the  Northmen  had  withdrawn  simply  with  the 
view  of  gaining  firmer  footing  for  a  new  attack ;  three 
years  indeed  had  hardly  passed  before  Mercia  was  in- 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449—1071.  71 

vaded  and  its  under-King  driven  over  sea  to  make  place 
for  a  tributary  of  the  invaders.  From  Repton  half  their 
host  marched  northwards  to  the  Tyne,  while  Guthrum 
led  the  rest  into  his  kingdom  of  East-Anglia  to  prepare 
for  their  next  year's  attack  on  Wessex.  In  876  his  fleet 
appeared  before  Wareham,  and  when  driven  thence  by 
jElfred,  the  Northmen  threw  themselves  into  Exeter. 
Their  presence  there  was  likely  to  stir  a  rising  of  the 
Welsh,  and  through  the  winter  Alfred  girded  himself 
for  this  new  peril.  At  break  of  spring  his  army  closed 
round  the  town,  a  hired  fleet  cruised  off  the  coast  to 
guard  against  rescue,  and  the  defeat  of  their  fellows  at 
Wareham  in  an  attempt  to  relieve  them  drove  the  pirates 
to  surrender.  They  swore  to  leave  Wessex  and  with- 
drew to  Gloucester.  But  ^Elfred  had  hardly  disbanded 
his  troops  when  his  enemies,  roused  by  the  arrival  of 
fresh  hordes  eager  for  plunder,  reappeared  at  Chippen- 
ham,  and  in  the  opening  of  878  marched  ravaging  over 
the  land.  The  surprise  of  Wessex  was  complete,  and  for 
a  month  or  two  the  general  panic  left  no  hope  of  resist- 
ance. ^Elfred,  with  his  small  band  of  followers,  could 
only  throw  himself  into  a  fort  raised  hastily  in  the  isle  of 
Athelney  among  the  marshes  of  the  Parret,  a  position 
from  which  he  could  watch  closely  the  movements  of  his 
foes.  But  with  the  first  burst  of  spring  he  called  the  thegns 
of  Somerset  to  his  standard,  and  still  gathering  troops  as 
he  moved  marched  through  Wiltshire  on  the  Northmen. 
He  found  their  host  at  Edington,  defeated  it  in  a  great 
battle,  and  after  a  siege  of  fourteen  days  forced  them  to 
surrender  and  to  bind  themselves  by  a  solemn  peace  or 
"  frith  "  at  Wedmore  in  Somerset.  In  form  the  Peace 
of  Wedmore  seemed  a  surrender  of  the  bulk  of  Britain 
to  its  invaders.  All  Northumbria,  all  East-Anglia,  all 
Central  England  east  of  a  line  which  stretched  from 
Thames'  mouth  along  the  Lea  to  Bedford,  thence  along 
the  Ouse  to  Watling  Street,  and  by  Watling  Street  to 
Chester,  was  left  subject  to  the  Northmen.  Throughout 
this  *  Danelagh  ' — as  it  was  called — the  conquerors  set- 
tled down  among  the  conquered  population  as  lords  of 
the  soil,  thickly  in  Northern  Britain,  more  thinly  in  its 


72        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

central  districts,  but  everywhere  guarding  jealously  their 
old  isolation  and  gathering  in  separate  '  heres  '  or  armies 
round  towns  which  were  only  linked  in  loose  confedera- 
cies. The  peace  had  in  fact  saved  little  more  than 
Wessex  itself.  But  in  saving  Wessex  it  saved  England. 
The  spell  of  terror  was  broken.  The  tide  of  invasion 
turned.  From  an  attitude  of  attack  the  Northmen  were 
thrown  back  on  an  attitude  of  defence.  The  whole  reign 
of  jElfred  was  a  preparation  for  a  fresh  struggle  that  was 
to  wrest  back  from  the  pirates  the  land  they  had  won. 

What  really  gave  England  heart  for  such  a  struggle 
was  the  courage  and  energy  of  the  King  himself.  ^Elfred 
was  the  noblest  r.s  he  was  the  most  complete  embodi- 
ment of  all  thr.c  is  great,  all  that  is  lovable,  in  the 
English  temper.  He  combined  as  no  other  man  has  ever 
combined  its  practical  energy,  its  patient  and  enduring 
force,  its  profound  sense  of  duty,  the  reserve  and  self- 
control  that  steadies  in  it  a  wide  outlook  and  a  restless 
daring,  its  temperance  and  fairness,  its  frank  geniality, 
its  sensitiveness  to  affection,  its  poetic  tenderness,  its 
deep  and  passionate  religion.  Religion  indeed  was  the 
groundwork  of  JElf red's  character.  His  temper  was  in- 
stinct with  piety.  Everywhere  throughout  his  writings 
that  remain  to  us  the  name  of  God,  the  thought  of  God, 
stir  him  to  outbursts  of  ecstatic  adoration.  But  he  was 
no  mere  saint.  He  felt  none  of  that  scorn  of  the  world 
about  him  which  drove  the  nobler  souls  of  his  day  to 
monastery  or  hermitage.  Vexed  as  he  was  by  sickness 
and  constant  pain,  his  temper  took  no  touch  of  asceticism. 
His  rare  geniality,  a  peculiar  elasticity  and  mobility  of 
nature,  gave  color  and  charm  to  his  life.  A  sunny  frank- 
ness and  openness  of  spirit  breathes  in  the  pleasant  chat 
of  his  books,  and  what  he  was  in  his  books  he  showed 
himself  in  his  daily  converse.  Alfred  was  in  truth  an 
artist,  and  both  the  lights  and  shadows  of  his  life  were 
those  of  the  artistic  temperament.  His  love  of  books, 
his  love  of  strangers,  his  questionings  of  travellers  and 
scholars,  betray  an  imaginative  restlessness  that  longs  to 
break  out  of  the  narrow  world  of  experience  which 
hemmed  him  in.  At  one  time  he  jots  down  news  of  a 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  78 

voyage  to  the  unknown  seas  of  the  north.  At  another  he 
listens  to  tidings  which  his  envoys  bring  back  from  the 
churches  of  Malabar.  And  side  by  side  with  this  rest- 
less outlook  of  the  artistic  nature  he  showed  its  tender- 
ness and  susceptibility,  its  vivid  apprehension  of  unseen 
danger,  its  craving  for  affection,  its  sensitiveness  to 
wrong.  It  was  with  himself  rather  than  with  his  reader 
that  he  communed  as  thoughts  of  the  foe  without,  of  in- 
gratitude and  opposition  within,  broke  the  calm  pages  of 
Gregory  or  Boethius.  "  Oh,  what  a  happy  man  was  he," 
he  cries  once,  u  that  man  that  had  a  naked  sword  hang- 
ing over  his  head  from  a  single  thread ;  so  as  to  me  it 
always  did!"  "  Desirest  thou  power?"  he  asks  at 
another  time.  "  But  thou  shalt  never  obtain  it  without 
sorrows — sorrows  from  strange  folk,  and  yet  keener  sor- 
rows from  thine  own  kindred."  "  Hardship  and  sorrow ! " 
he  breaks  out  again,  "  not  a  king  but  would  wish  to  be 
without  these  if  he  could.  But  1  know  that  he  cannot !  " 
The  loneliness  which  breathes  in  words  like  these  has 
often  begotten  in  great  rulers  a  cynical  contempt  of  men 
and  the  judgments  of  men.  But  cynicism  found  no  echo 
in  the  large  and  sympathetic  temper  of  ^Elfred.  He  not 
only  longed  for  the  love  of  his  subjects,  but  for  the  re- 
membrance of  "  generations  "  to  come.  Nor  did  his  inner 
gloom  or  anxiety  check  for  an  instant  his  vivid  and 
versatile  activity.  To  the  scholars  he  gathered  round 
him  he  seemed  the  very  type  of  a  scholar,  snatching  every 
hour  he  could  find  to  read  or  listen  to  books  read  to  him. 
The  singers  of  his  court  found  in  him  a  brother  singer, 
gathering  the  old  songs  of  his  people  to  teach  them  to 
his  children,  breaking  his  renderings  from  the  Latin  with 
simple  verse,  solacing  himself  in  hours  of  depression  with 
the  music  of  the  Psalms.  He  passed  from  court  and 
study  to  plan  buildings  and  instruct  craftsmen  in  gold' 
work,  to  teach  even  falconers  and  dog-keepers  their  busk 
ness.  But  all  this  versatility  and  ingenuity  was  con- 
trolled by  a  cool  good  sense.  ^Elfred  was  a  thorough 
man  of  business.  He  was  careful  of  detail,  laborious, 
methodical.  He  carried  in  his  bosom  a  little  handbook 
in  which  he  noted  things  as  they  struck  him — now  a  bit 


74        HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  family  genealogy,  now  a  prayer,  now  such  a  story  as 
that  of  Ealdhelm  playing  minstrel  on  the  bridge.  Each 
hour  of  the  day  had  its  appointed  task ;  there  was  the 
same  order  in  the  division  of  his  revenue  and  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  his  court. 

Wide  however  and  various  as  was  the  King's  temper, 
its  range  was  less  wonderful  than  its  harmony.  Of  the 
narrowness,  of  the  want  of  proportion,  of  the  predomi- 
nance of  one  quality  over  another  which  goes  commonly 
with  an  intensity  of  moral  purpose  ^Elfred  showed  not  a 
trace.  Scholar  and  soldier,  artist  and  man  of  business, 
poet  and  saint,  his  character  kept  that  perfect  balance 
which  charms  us  in  no  other  Englishman  save  Shakspere. 
But  full  and  harmonious  as  his  temper  was,  it  was  the 
temper  of  a  king.  Every  power  was  bent  to  the  work 
of  rule.  His  practical  energy  found  scope  for  itself  in 
the  material  and  administrative  restoration  of  the  wasted 
land.  His  intellectual  activity  breathed  fresh  life  into 
education  and  literature.  His  capacity  for  inspiring  trust 
and  affection  drew  the  hearts  of  Englishmen  to  a  common 
centre,  and  began  the  upbuilding  of  a  new  England. 
And  all  was  guided,  controlled,  ennobled  by  a  single 
aim.  "  So  long  as  I  have  lived,"  said  the  King  as  life 
closed  about  him,  "  I  have  striven  to  live  worthily." 
Little  by  little  men  came  to  know  what  such  a  life  of 
worthiness  meant.  Little  by  little  they  came  to  recog- 
nize in  Alfred  a  ruler  of  higher  and  nobler  stamp  than 
the  world  had  seen.  Never  had  it  seen  a  King  who  lived 
solely  for  the  good  of  his  people.  Never  had  it  seen  a 
ruler  who  set  aside  every  personal  aim  to  devote  himself 
solely  to  the  welfare  of  those  whom  he  ruled.  It  was 
this  grand  self-mastery  that  gave  him  his  power  over  the 
men  about  him.  Warrior  and  conqueror  as  he  was,  they 
saw  him  set  aside  at  thirty  the  warrior's  dream  of  con- 
quest ;  and  the  self-renouncement  of  Wedmore  struck 
the  key-note  of  his  reign.  But  still  more  is  it  this  height 
and  singleness  of  purpose,  this  absolute  concentration  of 
the  noblest  faculties  to  the  noblest  aim,  that  lifts  Alfred 
out  of  the  narrow  bounds  of  Wessex.  If  the  sphere  of 
his  action  seems  too  small  to  justify  the  comparison  of 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  75 

him  with  the  few  whom  the  world  owns  as  its  greatest 
men,  he  rises  to  their  level  in  the  moral  grandeur  of  his 
life.  And  it  is  this  which  has  hallowed  his  memory 
among  his  own  English  people.  "I  desire,"  said  the 
King  in  some  of  his  latest  words,  "  I  desire  to  leave  to 
the  men  that  come  after  me  a  remembrance  of  me  in  good 
works."  His  aim  has  been  more  than  fulfilled.  His 
memory  has  come  down  to  us  with  a  living  distinctness 
through  the  mists  of  exaggeration  and  legend  which  time 
gathered  round  it.  The  instinct  of  the  people  has  clung 
to  him  with  a  singular  affection.  The  love  which  he 
won  a  thousand  years  ago  has  lingered  round  his  name 
from  that  day  to  this.  While  every  other  name  of  those 
earlier  times  has  all  but  faded  from  the  recollection  of 
Englishmen,  that  of  JElfred  remains  familiar  to  every 
English  child. 

The  secret  of  Alfred's  government  lay  in  his  own 
vivid  energy.  He  could  hardly  have  chosen  braver  or 
more  active  helpers  than  those  whom  he  employed  both 
in  his  political  and  in  his  educational  efforts.  The  chil- 
dren whom  he  trained  to  rule  proved  the  ablest  rulers  of 
their  time.  But  at  the  outset  of  his  reign  he  stood  alone, 
and  what  work  was  to  be  done  was  done  by  the  King 
himself.  His  first  efforts  were  directed  to  the  material 
restoration  of  his  realm.  The  burnt  and  wasted  country 
saw  its  towns  built  again,  forts  erected  in  positions  of 
danger,  new  abbeys  founded,  the  machinery  of  justice 
and  government  restored,  the  laws  codified  and  amended. 
Still  more  strenuous  were  Alfred's  efforts  for  its  moral 
and  intellectual  restoration.  Even  in  Mercia  and  North- 
umbria  the  pirates'  sword  had  left  few  survivors  of  the 
schools  of  Ecgberht  or  Bseda,  and  matters  were  even 
worse  in  Wessex  which  had  been  as  yet  the  most  igno- 
rant of  the  English  kingdoms.  "  When  I  began  to  reign," 
said  ^Elfred,  "  I  cannot  remember  one  priest  south  of 
the  Thames  who  could  render  his  service-book  into  Eng- 
lish." For  instructors  indeed  he  could  find  only  a  few 
Mercian  prelates  and  priests  with  one  Welsh  bishop, 
Asser.  u  Formerly,"  the  king  writes  bitterly,  "  men  came 
hither  from  foreign  lands  to  seek  for  instruction,  and  now 


TC  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

when  we  desire  it  we  can  only  obtain  it  from  abroad." 
But  his  mind  was  far  from  being  prisoned  within  his  own 
island.  He  sent  a  Norwegian  ship-master  to  explore  the 
White  Sea,  and  Wulfstan  to  trace  the  coast  of  Esthonia ; 
envoys  bore  his  presents  to  the  churches  of  India  and 
Jerusalem,  and  an  annual  mission  carried  Peter' s-pence 
to  Rome.  But  it  was  with  the  Franks  that  his  inter- 
course was  closest,  and  it  was  from  them  that  he  drew 
the  scholars  to  aid  him  in  his  work  of  education.  A 
scholar  named  Grimbald  came  from  St.  Omer  to  preside 
over  his  new  abbey  at  Winchester ;  and  John,  the  old 
Saxon,  was  fetched  from  the  abbey  of  Corbey  to  rule  a 
monastery  and  school  that  JElfred's  gratitude  for  his  de- 
liverance from  the  Danes  raised  in  the  marshes  of  Athel- 
ney.  The  real  work  however  to  be  done  was  done,  not 
by  these  teachers  but  by  the  King  himself.  JElfred  estab- 
lished a  school  for  the  young  nobles  in  his  court,  and  it 
was  to  the  need  of  books  for  these  scholars  in  their  own 
tongue  that  we  owe  his  most  remarkable  literary  effort. 
He  took  his  books  as  he  found  them — they  were  the  pop- 
ular manuals  of  his  age — the  Consolation  of  Boethius, 
the  Pastoral  of  Pope  Gregory,  the  compilation  of  Orosius, 
then  the  one  accessible  hand-book  of  universal  history, 
and  the  history  of  his  own  people  by  Bseda.  He  trans- 
lated these  works  into  English,  but  he  was  far  more  than 
a  translator,  he  was  an  editor  for  the  people.  Here  he 
omitted,  there  he  expanded.  He  enriched  Orosius  by  a 
sketch  of  the  new  geographical  discoveries  in  the  North. 
He  gave  a  West-Saxon  form  to  his  selections  from  Baeda. 
In  one  place  he  stops  to  explain  his  theory  of  govern- 
ment, his  wish  for  a  thicker  population,  his  conception 
of  national  welfare  as  consisting  in  a  due  balance  of 
priest,  soldier,  and  churl.  The  mention  of  Nero  spurs 
him  to  an  outbreak  on  the  abuses  of  power.  The  cold 
Providence  of  Boethius  gives  way  to  an  enthusiastic  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  goodness  of  God.  As  he  writes, 
his  large-hearted  nature  flings  off  its  royal  mantle,  and  he 
talks  as  a  man  to  men.  "  Do  not  blame  me,"  he  prays 
with  a  charming  simplicity,  "  if  any  know  Latin  better 
than  I,  for  every  man  must  say  what  he  says  and  do 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  77 

what  he  does  according  to  his  ability."  But  simple  as 
was  his  aim,  Alfred  changed  the  whole  front  of  our  liter- 
ature. Before  him,  England  possessed  in  her  own  tongue 
one  great  poem  and  a  train  of  ballads  and  battle-songs. 
Prose  she  had  none.  The  mighty  roll  of  prose  books 
that  fill  her  libraries  begins  with  the  translations  of 
JElfred,  and  above  all  with  the  chronicle  of  his  reign. 
It  seems  likely  that  the  King's  rendering  of  Beeda's  his- 
tory gave  the  first  impulse  towards  the  compilation  of 
what  is  known  as  the  English  or  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle, 
which  was  certainly  thrown  into  its  present  form  during 
his  reign.  The  meagre  li*t  of  the  Kings  of  Wessex  and 
the  bishops  of  Winchester,  which  had  been  preserved 
from  older  times,  were  roughly  expanded  into  a  national 
history  by  insertions  from  Baeda :  but  it  is  when  it 
reaches  the  reign  of  Alfred  that  the  chronicle  suddenly 
widens  into  the  vigorous  narrative,  full  of  life  and  orig- 
inality, that  marks  the  gift  of  a  new  power  to  the  Eng- 
lish tongue.  Varying  as  it  does  from  age  to  age  in  his- 
toric value,  it  remains  the  first  vernacular  history  of  any 
Teutonic  people,  and  save  for  the  Gothic  translations  of 
Ulfilas,  the  earliest  and  most  venerable  monument  of 
Teutonic  prose. 

But  all  this  literary  activity  was  only  a  part  of  that 
general  upbuilding  of  Wessex  by  which  JElfred  was  pre- 
paring for  the  fresh  contest  with  the  stranger.  He  knew 
that  the  actual  winning  back  of  the  Danelagh  must  be  a 
work  of  the  sword,  and  through  these  long  years  of  peace 
he  was  busy  with  the  creation  of  such  a  force  as  might 
match  that  of  the  Northmen.  A  fleet  grew  out  of  the 
little  squadron  which  Alfred  had  been  forced  to  man 
with  Frisian  seamen.  The  national  fyrd  or  levy  of  all 
freemen  at  the  King's  call  was  reorganized.  It  was  now 
divided  into  two  halves,  one  of  which  served  in  the  field 
while  the  other  guarded  its  own  burhs  and  townships 
and  served  to  relieve  its  fellow  when  the  men's  forty  days 
of  service  was  ended.  A  more  disciplined  military  force 
was  provided  by  subjecting  all  owners  of  five  hides  of 
land  to  thegn-service,  a  step  which  recognized  the  change 
that  had  now  substituted  the  thegn  for  the  eorl  and  in 


78  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

which  we  see  the  beginning  of  a  feudal  system.  How 
effective  these  measures  were  was  seen  when  the  new 
resistance  they  met  on  the  Continent  drove  the  North- 
men to  a  fresh  attack  on  Britain.  In  893  a  large  fleet 
steered  for  the  Andredsweald,  while  the  sea-king  Hasting 
entered  the  Thames.  Alfred  held  both  at  bay  through 
the  year  till  the  men  of  the  Danelagh  rose  at  their  com- 
rades' call.  Wessex  stood  again  front  to  front  with  the 
Northmen.  But  the  King's  measures  had  made  the 
realm  strong  enough  to  set  aside  its  old  policy  of  defence 
for  one  of  vigorous  attack.  His  son  Eadward  and  his  son- 
in-law  ^Ethelred,  whom  he  ha/1  set  as  Ealdorman  over 
what  remained  of  Mercia,  showed  themselves  as  skilful 
and  active  as  the  King.  The  aim  of  the  Northmen  was 
to  rouse  again  the  hostility  of  the  Welsh,  but  while 
JElfred  held  Exeter  against  their  fleet  Edward  and 
^thelred  caught  their  army  near  the  Severn  and  over- 
threw it  with  a  vast  slaughter  at  Buttington.  The  de- 
struction of  their  camp  on  the  Lea  by  the  united  English 
forces  ended  the  war ;  in  897  Hasting  again  withdrew 
across  the  Channel,  and  the  Danelagh  made  peace.  It 
was  with  the  peace  he  had  won  still  about  him  that 
^Elfred  died  in  901,  and  warrior  as  his  son  Edward  had 
shown  himself,  he  clung  to  his  father's  policy  of  rest. 
It  was  not  till  910  that  a  fresh  rising  of  the  Northmen 
forced  Alfred's  children  to  gird  themselves  to  the  con- 
quest of  the  Danelagh. 

While  Eadward  bridled  East-Anglia  his  sister  JEthel- 
flaed,  in  whose  hands  ^Ethelred's  death  left  English 
Mercia,  attacked  the  "  Five  Boroughs,"  a  rude  confederacy 
which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  older  Mercian  kingdom. 
Derby  represented  the  original  Mercia  on  the  upper 
Trent,  Lincoln  the  Lindiswaras,  Leicester  the  Middle- 
English,  Stamford  the  province  of  the  Gyrwas,  Notting- 
ham probably  that  of  the  Southumbrians.  Each  of  these 
"  Five  Boroughs  "  seems  to  have  been  ruled  by  its  earl 
with  his  separate  "host;  "  within  each  twelve  "lawmen  " 
administered  Danish  law,  while  a  common  justice-court 
existed  for  the  whole  confederacy.  In  her  attack  upon  this 
powerful  league  ^ithelflied  abandoned  the  older  strategy 


EAELY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  79 

of  battle  and  raid  for  that  of  siege  and  fortress-building. 
Advancing  along  the  line  of  Trent,  she  fortified  Tarn  worth 
and  Stafford  on  its  head-waters  ;  when  a  rising  in  Gwent 
called  her  back  to  the  Welsh  border,  her  army  stormed 
Brecknock ;  and  its  king  no  sooner  fled  for  shelter  to  the 
Northmen  in  whose  aid  he  had  risen  than  ^Ethelflaed  at 
once  closed  on  Derby.  Raids  from  Middle-England  failed 
to  draw  the  Lady  of  Mercia  from  her  prey  ;  and  Derby 
was  hardly  her  own  when,  turning  southward,  she  forced 
the  surrender  of  Leicester.  The  brilliancy  of  his  sister's 
exploits  had  as  yet  eclipsed  those  of  the  King,  but  the  son 
of  JElfred  was  a  vigorous  and  active  ruler  ;  he  had  re- 
pulsed a  dangerous  inroad  of  the  Northmen  from  France, 
summoned  no  doubt  by  the  cry  of  distress  from  their 
brethren  in  England,  and  had  bridled  East-Anglia  to  the 
south  by  the  erection  of  forts  at  Hertford  and  Witham. 
On  the  death  of  JEthelflsed  in  918  he  came  boldly  to  the 
front.  Annexing  Mercia  to  Wessex,  and  thus  gathering 
the  whole  strength  of  the  kingdom  into  his  single  hand, 
he  undertook  the  systematic  reduction  of  the  Danelagh. 
South  of  the  Middle-English  and  the  Fens  lay  a  tract 
watered  by  the  Ouse  and  the  Nen — originally  the  dis- 
trict of  the  tribe  known  as  the  South-English,  and  now, 
like  the  Five  Boroughs  of  the  north,  grouped  around  the 
towns  of  Bedford,  Huntingdon,  and  Northampton.  The 
reduction  of  these  was  followed  by  that  of  East-Anglia ; 
the  Northmen  of  the  Fens  submitted  with  Stamford,  the 
Southumbrians  with  Nottingham.  Edward's  Mercian 
troops  had  already  seized  Manchester;  he  himself  was 
preparing  to  complete  his  conquest,  when  in  924  the 
whole  of  the  North  suddenly  laid  itself  at  his  feet.  Not 
merely  Northumbria  but  the  Scots  and  the  Britons  of 
Strathclyde  •'  chose  him  to  father  and  lord." 

The  triumph  was  his  last.  Eadward  died  in  925,  but 
the  reign  of  his  son  ^Ethelstan,  Alfred's  golden-haired 
grandson  whom  the  King  had  girded  as  a  child  with  a 
sword  set  in  a  golden  scabbard  and  a  gem-studded  belt, 
proved  even  more  glorious  than  his  own.  In  spite  of  its 
submission  the  North  had  still  to  be  won.  Dread  of  the 
Northmen  had  drawn  Scot  and  Cumbrian  to  their  ac- 


80        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

knowledgment  of  Eadward's  overlordship,  but  ^Ethel- 
stan  no  sooner  incorporated  Northumbria  with  his  do- 
minions than  dread  of  Wessex  took  the  place  of  dread 
of  the  Danelagh.  The  Scot  King  Constantino  organized 
a  league  of  Scot,  Cumbrian,  and  Welshman  with  the 
Northmen.  The  league  was  broken  by  ^thelstan's  rapid 
action  in  926  ;  the  North-Welsh  were  forced  to  pay  an- 
nual tribute,  to  march  in  his  armies,  and  to  attend  his 
councils;  the  West-Welsh  of  Cornwall  were  reduced  to 
a  like  vassalage,  and  finally  driven  from  Exeter,  which 
they  had  shared  till  then  with  its  English  inhabitants. 
But  ten  years  later  the  same  league  called  JEthelstan 
again  to  the  North ;  and  though  Constantino  was  pun- 
ished by  an  army  which  wasted  his  kingdom  while  a  fleet 
ravaged  its  coasts  to  Caithness  the  English  army  had  no 
sooner  withdrawn  than  Northumbria  rose  in  937  at  the 
appearance  of  a  fleet  of  pirates  from  Ireland  under  the 
sea-king  Anlaf  in  the  Humber.  Scot  and  Cumbrian 
fought  beside  the  Northmen  against  the  West-Saxon 
King ;  but  his  victory  at  Brunanburh  crushed  the  con- 
federacy and  won  peace  till  his  death.  His  son  Ead- 
mund  was  but  a  boy  at  his  accession  in  940,  and  the 
North  again  rose  in  revolt.  The  men  of  the  Five 
Boroughs  joined  their  kinsmen  in  Northumbria ;  once 
Eadmund  was  driven  to  a  peace  which  left  him  King  but 
south  of  the  Watling  Street;  and  only  years  of  hard 
fighting  again  laid  the  Danelagh  at  his  feet. 

But  policy  was  now  to  supplement  the  work  of  the 
sword.  The  completion  of  the  West-Saxon  realm  was 
in  fact  reserved  for  the  hands,  not  of  a  king  or  warrior, 
but  of  a  priest.  Dunstan  stands  first  in  the  line  of  eccle- 
siastical statesmen  who  counted  among  them  Lanfranc 
and  Wolsey  and  ended  in  Laud.  He  is  still  more  re- 
markable in  himself,  in  his  own  vivid  personality  after 
eight  centuries  of  revolution  and  change.  He  was  born 
in  the  little  hamlet  of  Glastonbury,  the  home  of  his  father, 
Heorstan,  a  man  of  wealth  and  brother  of  the  bishops  of 
Wells  and  of  Winchester.  It  must  have  been  in  his 
father's  hall  that  the  fair,  diminutive  boy,  with  his  scant 
but  beautiful  hair,  caught  his  love  for  "  the  vain  songs 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1701.  81 

of  heathendom,  the  trifling  legends,  the  funeral  chaunts," 
which  afterwards  roused  against  him  the  charge  of  sorcery. 
Thence  too  he  might  have  derived  his  passionate  love  of 
music,  and  his  custom  of  carrying  his  harp  in  hand  on 
journey  or  visit.  Wandering  scholars  of  Ireland  had 
left  their  books  in  the  monastery  of  Glastonbury,  as  they 
left  them  along  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube  ;  and  Dunstan 
plunged  into  the  study  of  sacred  and  profane  letters  till 
his  brain  broke  down  in  delirium.  So  famous  became  his 
knowledge  in  the  neighborhood  that  news  of  it  reached 
the  court  of  JEthelstan,  but  his  appearance  there  was  the 
signal  for  a  burst  of  ill-will  among  the  courtiers.  They 
drove  him  from  the  king's  train,  threw  him  from  his 
horse  as  he  passed  through  the  marshes,  and  with  the 
wild  passion  of  their  age  trampled  him  underfoot  in  the 
mire.  The  outrage  ended  in  fever,  and  Dunstan  rose  from 
his  sick-bed  a  monk.  But  the  monastic  profession  was 
then  a  little  more  than  a  vow  of  celibacy  and  his  devotion 
took  no  ascetic  turn.  His  nature  in  fact  was  sunny,  ver- 
satile, artistic ;  full  of  strong  affections,  and  capable  of 
inspiring  others  with  affections  as  strong.  Quick-witted, 
of  tenacious  memory,  a  ready  and  fluent  speaker,  gay 
and  genial  in  address,  an  artist,  a  musician,  he  was  at 
the  same  time  an  indefatigable  worker  at  books,  at  build- 
ing, at  handicraft.  As  his  sphere  began  to  widen  we  see 
him  followed  by  a  train  of  pupils,  busy  with-  literature, 
writing,  harping,  painting,  designing.  One  morning  a 
lady  summons  him  to  her  house  to  design  a  robe  which 
she  is  embroidering,  and  as  he  bends  with  her  maidens 
over  their  toil  his  harp  hung  upon  the  wall  sounds  with- 
out mortal  touch  tones  which  the  excited  ears  around 
frame  into  a  joj^ous  antiphon. 

From  this  scholar-life  Dunstan  was  called  to  a  wider 
sphere  of  activity  by  the  accession  of  Eadmund.  But  the 
old  jealousies  revived  at  his  reappearance  at  court,  and 
counting  the  game  lost  Dunstan  prepared  again  to  with- 
draw. The  King  had  spent  the  day  in  the  chase ;  the 
red  deer  which  he  was  pursuing  (lashed  over  Cheddar 
cliffs,  and  his  horse  only  checked  itself  on  the  brink  of 
the  ravine  at  the  moment  when  Eadmund  in  the  bitterness 


82  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

of  death  was  repenting  of  his  injustice  to  Dunstan.  He 
was  at  once  summoned  on  the  King's  return.  "Saddle 
your  horse,"  said  Eadmund,  "  and  ride  with  me."  The 
royal  train  swept  over  the  marshes  to  his  home  ;  and  the 
King,  bestowing  on  him  the  kiss  of  peace,  seated  him  in 
the  abbot's  chair  as  Abbot  of  Glastonbury.  Dunstan  be- 
came one  of  Edmund's  councillors  and  his  hand  was  seen 
in  the  settlement  of  the  North.  It  was  the  hostility  of 
the  states  around  it  to  the  West-Saxon  rule  which  had 
roused  so  often  revolt  in  the  Danelagh ;  but  from  this 
time  we  hear  nothing  more  of  the  hostility  of  Bernicia, 
while  Strathclyde  was  conquered  by  Eadmund  and 
turned  adroitly  to  account  in  winning  over  the  Scots  to 
his  cause.  The  greater  part  of  it  was  granted  to  their 
King  Malcolm  on  terms  that  he  should  be  Eadmund  s 
fellow-worker  by  sea  arid  land.  The  league  of  Scot  and 
Briton  was  thus  finally  broken  up,  and  the  fidelity  of 
the  Scots  secured  by  their  need  of  help  in  holding  down 
their  former  ally.  The  settlement  was  soon  troubled  by 
the  young  King's  death.  As  he  feasted  at  Pucklechurch 
in  the  May  of  946,  Leofa,  a  robber  whom  Eadmund  had 
banished  from  the  land,  entered  the  hall,  seated  himself 
at  the  royal  board,  and  drew  sword  on  the  cup-bearer 
when  he  bade  him  retire.  The  King  sprang  in  wrath  to 
his  thegn's  aid,  and  seizing  Leofa  by  the  hair,  flung  him 
to  the  ground  ;  but  in  the  struggle  the  robber  drove  his 
dagger  to  Eadmund's  heart.  His  death  at  once  stirred 
fresh  troubles  in  the  North  ;  the  Danelagh  rose  against 
his  brother  and  successor,  Eadred,  and  some  years  of 
hard  fighting  were  needed  before  it  was  again  driven  to 
own  the  English  supremacy.  But  with  its  submission 
in  954  the  work  of  conquest  was  done.  Dogged  as  his 
fight  had  been,  the  Northman  at  last  owned  himself 
beaten.  From  the  moment  of  Eadred's  final  triumph  all 
resistance  came  to  an  end.  The  Danelagh  ceased  to  be 
a  force  in  English  politics.  North  might  part  anew  from 
South  ;  men  of  Yorkshire  might  again  cross  swords  with 
men  of  Hampshire ;  but  their  strife  was  henceforth  a 
local  strife  between  men  of  the  same  people  ;  it  was  a 
strife  of  Englishmen  with  Englishmen,  and  not  of  Eng- 
lishmen with  Northmen. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FEUDALISM  AND  THE  MONARCHY. 

954_1071. 

THE  fierceness  of  the  Northman's  onset  had  hidden  the 
real  character  of  his  attack.  To  the  men  who  first  fronted 
the  pirates  it  seemed  as  though  the  story  of  the  world  had 
gone  back  to  the  days  when  the  German  barbarians  first 
broke  in  upon  the  civilized  world.  It  was  so  above  all  in 
Britain.  All  that  tradition  told  of  the  Englishmen's  own 
attack  on  the  island  was  seen  in  the  Northmen's  attack 
on  it.  Boats  of  marauders  from  the  northern  seas  again 
swarmed  off  the  British  coast ;  church  and  town  were 
again  the  special  object  of  attack ;  the  invaders  again 
settled  on  the  conquered  soil ;  heathendom  again  proved 
stronger  than  the  faith  of  Christ.  But  the  issues  of  the 
two  attacks  showed  the  mighty  difference  between  them. 
When  the  English  ceased  from  their  onset  upon  Roman 
Britain  Roman  Britain  had  disappeared,  and  a  new  peo- 
ple of  conquerors  stood  alone  on  the  conquered  land. 
The  Northern  storm  on  the  other  hand  left  land,  people, 
government  unchanged.  England  remained  a  country  of 
Englishmen.  The  conquerors  sank  into  the  mass  of  the 
conquered,  and  Woden  yielded  without  a  struggle  to 
Christ.  The  strife  between  Briton  and  Englishman  was 
in  fact  a  strife  between  men  of  different  races,  while  the 
strife  between  Northman  and  Englishman  was  a  strife 
between  men  whose  race  was  the  same.  The  followers 
of  Hengest  or  of  Ida  were  men  utterly  alien  from  the  life 
of  Britain,  strange  to  its  arts,  its  culture,  its  wealth,  as 
they  were  strange  to  the  social  degradation  which  Rome 
had  brought  on  its  province.  But  the  Northman  was 

(83) 


84  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

little  more  than  an  Englishman  bringing  back  to  an  Eng- 
land which  had  drifted  far  from  its  origin  the  barbaric 
life  of  its  earliest  forefathers.  Nowhere  throughout 
Europe  was  the  fight  so  fierce,  because  nowhere  else  were 
the  fighters  men  of  one  blood  and  one  speech.  But  just 
for  this  reason  the  union  of  the  combatants  was  nowhere 
so  peaceful  or  so  complete.  The  victory  of  the  house  of 
JElfred  only  hastened  a  process  of  fusion  which  was  al- 
ready going  on.  From  the  first  moment  of  his  settlement 
in  the  Danelagh  the  Northman  had  been  passing  into  an 
Englishman.  The  settlers  were  few ;  they  were  scattered 
among  a  large  population  ;  in  tongue,  in  manner,  in  in- 
stitutions there  was  little,  to  distinguish  them  from  the 
men  among  whom  they  dwelt.  Moreover  their  national 
temper  helped  on  the  process  of  assimilation.  Even  in 
France,  where  difference  of  language  and  difference  of 
custom  seemed  to  interpose  an  impassable  barrier  be- 
tween the  Northman  settled  in  Normandy  and  his  neigh- 
bors, he  was  fast  becoming  a  Frenchman.  In  England, 
where  no  such  barriers  existed,  the  assimilation  was  even 
quicker.  The  two  peoples  soon  became  confounded.  In 
a  few  years  a  Northman  in  blood  was  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  and  another  Northman  in  blood  was  Arch- 
bishop of  York. 

The  fusion  might  have  been  delayed  if  not  wholly 
averted  by  continued  descents  from  the  Scandinavian 
homeland.  But  with  Eadred's  reign  the  long  attack 
which  the  Northman  had  directed  against  western 
Christendom  came,  for  a  while  at  least,  to  an  end.  On 
the  world  which  it  assailed  its  results  had  been  immense. 
It  had  utterly  changed  the  face  of  the  west.  The  empire 
of  Ecgberht,  the  empire  of  Charles  the  Great,  had  been 
alike  dashed  to  pieces.  But  break  and  change  as  it  might, 
Christendom  had  held  the  Northmen  at  bay.  The  Scan- 
dinavian power  which  had  grown  up  on  the  western  seas 
had  disappeared  like  a  dream.  In  Ireland  the  North- 
man's rule  had  dwindled  to  the  holding  of  a  few  coast 
towns.  In  France  his  settlements  had  shrunk  to  the  one 
settlement  of  Normandy.  In  England  every  Northman 
was  a  subject  of  the  English  King.  Even  the  Empire 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          85 

of  the  Seas  had  passed  from  the  Sea-King's  hands.  It 
was  an  English  and  not  a  Scandinavian  fleet  that  for 
fifty  years  to  come  held  mastery  in  the  English  and  the 
Irish  Channels.  With  Eadred's  victory  in  fact  the  strug- 
gle seemed  to  have  reached  its  close.  Stray  pirate  boats 
still  hung  off  headland  and  coast ;  stray  vikings  still 
sho'ved  out  in  spring-tide  to  gather  booty.  But  for  nearly 
half  a  century  to  come  no  great  pirate  fleet  made  its  way 
to  the  west,  or  landed  on  the  shores,  of  Britain.  The 
energies  of  the  Northmen  were  in  fact  absorbed  through 
these  years  in  the  political  changes  of  Scandinavia  itself. 
The  old  isolation  of  fiord  from  fiord  and  dale  from  dale 
was  breaking  down.  The  little  commonwealths  which  had 
held  so  jealously  aloof  from  each  other  were  being  drawn 
together  whether  they  would  or  no.  In  each  of  the  three 
regions  of  the  north  great  kingdoms  were  growing  up.  In 
Sweden  King  Eric  made  himself  lord  of  the  petty  states 
about  him.  In  Denmark  King  Gorm  built  up  in  the  same 
way  a  monarchy  of  the  Danes.  Norway,  though  it  lin- 
gered long,  followed  at  last  in  the  same  track.  Legend 
told  how  one  of  its  many  rulers,  Harald  of  Westfold,  sent 
his  men  to  bring  him  Gytha  of  Hordaland,  a  girl  he  had 
chosen  for  wife,  and  how  Gytha  sent  his  men  back  again 
with  taunts  at  his  petty  realm.  The  taunts  went  home, 
and  Harald  vowed  never  to  clip  or  comb  his  hair  till  he 
had  made  all  Norway  his  own.  So  every  springtide  came 
war  and  hosting,  harrying  and  burning,  till  a  great  fight 
at  Hafursfiord  settled  the  matter,  and  Harald  "  Ugly- 
Head  "  as  men  called  him  while  the  strife  lasted  was  free 
to  shear  his  locks  again  and  became  Harald  "  Fair-Hair." 
The  Northmen  loved  no  master,  and  a  great  multitude 
fled  out  of  the  country,  some  pushing  as  far  as  Iceland 
and  colonizing  it,  some  swarming  to  the  Orkneys  and 
Hebrides  till  Harald  harried  them  out  again  and  the  sea- 
kings  sailed  southward  to  join  Guthrum's  host  in  the 
Rhine  country  or  follow  Rolf  to  his  fights  on  the  Seine. 
But  little  by  little  the  land  settled  down  into  order,  and 
the  three  Scandinavian  realms  gathered  strength  for  new 
efforts  which  were  to  leave  their  mark  on  our  after  history. 
But  of  the  new  danger  which  threatened  it  in  this  union 


86  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  the  north  England  knew  little.  The  storm  seemed  to 
have  drifted  utterly  away;  and  the  land  passed  from  a 
hundred  years  of  ceaseless  conflict  into  a  time  of  peace. 
Here  as  elsewhere  the  Northman  had  failed  in  his  pur- 
pose of  conquest ;  but  here  as  elsewhere  he  had  done  a 
mighty  work.  In  shattering  the  empire  of  Charles  the 
Great  he  had  given  birth  to  the  nations  of  modern 
Europe.  In  his  long  strife  with  Englishmen  he  had 
created  an  English  people.  The  national  union  which 
had  been  brought  about  for  a  moment  by  the  sword  of 
Ecgberht  was  a  union  of  sheer  force  which  broke  down 
at  the  first  blow  of  the  sea-robbers.  The  black  boats  of 
the  Northmen  were  so  many  wedges  that  split  up  the 
fabric  of  the  roughly-built  realm.  But  the  very  agency 
which  destroyed  the  new  England  was  destined  to  bring 
it  back  again,  and  to  breathe  into  it  a  life  that  made  its 
union  real.  The  peoples  who  had  so  long  looked  on  each 
other  as  enemies  found  themselves  fronted  by  a  common 
foe.  They  were  thrown  together  by  a  common  danger 
and  the  need  of  a  common  defence.  Their  common  faith 
grew  into  a  national  bond  as  religion  struggled  hand  in 
hand  with  England  itself  against  the  heathen  of  the  north. 
They  recognized  a  common  king  as  a  common  struggle 
changed  Alfred  and  his  sons  from  mere  leaders  of  West 
Saxons  into  the  leaders  of  all  Englishmen  in  their  fight 
with  the  stranger.  And  when  the  work  which  ^Elfred 
set  his  house  to  do  was  done,  when  the  yoke  of  the 
Northman  was  lifted  from  the  last  of  his  conquests,  Engle 
and  Saxon,  Northumbrian  and  Mercian,  spent  with  the 
battle  for  a  common  freedom  and  a  common  country, 
knew  themselves  in  the  hour  of  their  deliverance  as  an 
English  people. 

The  new  people  found  its  centre  in  the  King.  The 
heightening  of  the  royal  power  was  a  direct  outcome 
of  the  war.  The  dying  out  of  other  royal  stocks  left 
the  house  of  Cerdic  the  one  line  of  hereditary  kingship. 
But  it  was  the  war  with  the  Northmen  that  raised  Alfred 
and  his  sons  from  tribal  leaders  into  national  kings. 
The  loner  series  of  triumphs  which  wrested  the  land  from 
the  stranger  begot  a  new  and  universal  loyalty  ;  while  the 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          87 

wider  dominion  which  their  success  bequeathed  removed 
the  kings  further  and  further  from  their  people,  lifted 
them  higher  and  higher  above  the  nobles,  and  clothed 
them  more  and  more  with  a  mysterious  dignity  =  Above 
all  the  religious  character  of  the  war  against  the  North- 
men gave  a  religious  character  to  the  sovereigns  who 
waged  it.  The  king,  if  he  was  no  longer  sacred  as  the 
son  of  Woden,  became  yet  more  sacred  as  "  the  Lord's 
Anointed."  By  the  very  fact  of  his  consecration  he  was 
pledged  to  religious  rule,  to  justice,  mercy,  and  good 
government ;  but  his  "  hallowing  "  invested  him  also  with 
a  power  drawn  not  from  the  will  of  man  or  the  assent 
of  his  subjects  but  from  the  will  of  God,  and  treason 
against  him  became  the  worst  of  crimes.  Every  reign 
lifted  the  sovereign  higher  in  the  social  scale.  The  bishop, 
once  ranked  equal  with  him  in  value  of  life,  sank  to  the 
level  of  the  ealdorman.  The  ealdorman  himself,  once  the 
hereditary  ruler  of  a  smaller  state,  became  a  mere  delegate 
of  the  national  king,  with  an  authority  curtailed  in  every 
shire  by  that  of  the  royal  ,^hire-reeves,  cfficers  despatched 
to  levy  the  royal  revenues  and  to  administer  the  royal 
justice.  Among  the  later  nobility  of  the  thegns  personal 
service  with  such  a  lord  was  held  not  to  degrade  but  to  en- 
noble. "  Dish-thegn  "  and  "  bower-thegn,"  "  house- thegn  " 
and  "  horse-thegn "  found  themselves  great  officers  of 
state  ;  and  development  of  politics,  the  wider  extension  of 
home  and  foreign  affairs  were  alreadjr  transforming  these 
royal  officers  into  a  standing  council  or  ministry  for  the 
transaction  of  the  ordinary  administrative  business  and  the 
reception  of  judicial  appeals.  Such  a  ministry,  composed  of 
thegns  or  prelates  nominated  by  the  King,  and  constitut- 
ing in  itself  a  large  part  of  the  Witenagemote  when  that 
assembly  was  gathered  for  legislative  purposes,  drew  the 
actual  control  of  affairs  more  and  more  into  the  hands  of 
the  sovereign  himself. 

But  the  king's  power  was  still  a  personal  power.  He 
had  to  be  everywhere  and  see  for  himself  that  everything 
he  willed  was  done.  The  royal  claims  lay  still  far  ahead 
of  the  real  strength  of  the  Crown.  There  was  a  want  of 
administrative  machinery  in  actual  connexion  with  the 


88  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

government,  responsible  to  it,  drawing  its  force  directly 
from  it,  and  working  automatically  in  its  name  even 
in  moments  when  the  royal  power  was  itself  weak  or 
wavering.  The  Crown  was  strong  under  a  king  who 
was  strong,  whose  personal  action  was  felt  everywhere 
throughout  the  realm,  whose  dread  lay  on  every  reeve 
and  ealdorman.  But  with  a  weak  king  the  Crown  was 
weak.  Ealdormen,  provincial  witanagemotes,  local 
jurisdictions,  ceased  to  move  at  the  royal  bidding  the 
moment  the  direct  royal  pressure  was  loosened  or  re- 
moved. Enfeebled  as  they  were,  the  old  provincial 
jealousies,  the  old  tendency  to  severance  and  isolation 
lingered  on  and  woke  afresh  when  the  Crown  fell  to  a 
nerveless  ruler  or  to  a  child.  And  at  the  moment  we 
have  reached  the  royal  power  and  the  national  union 
it  embodied  had  to  battle  with  fresh  tendencies  towards 
national  disintegration  which  sprang  like  itself  from  the 
struggle  with  the  Northman.  The  tendency  to  wards  per- 
sonal dependence  and  towards  a  social  organization  based 
on  personal  dependence  received  an  overpowering  im- 
pulse from  the  strife.  The  long  insecurity  of  a  century  of 
warfare  drove  the  ceorl,  the  free  tiller  of  the  soil,  to  seek 
protection  more  and  more  from  the  thegn  beside  him.  The 
freeman  "  commended  "  himself  to  a  lord  who  promised 
aid,  and  as  the  price  of  this  shelter  he  surrendered  his  free- 
hold to  receive  it  back  as  a  fief  laden  with  conditions  of 
military  service.  The  principle  of  personal  allegiance 
which  was  embodied  in  the  very  notion  of  thegnhood,  it- 
self tended  to  widen  into  a  theory  of  general  dependence. 
From  jElfred's  day  it  was  assumed  that  no  man  could  exist 
without  a  lord.  The  "  lordless  man"  became  a  sort  of 
outlaw  in  the  realm.  The  free  man,  the  very  base  of  the 
older  English  constitution,  died  down  more  and  more  into 
the  "  villein,"  the  man  who  did  suit  and  service  to  a 
master,  who  followed  him  to  the  field,  who  looked  to  his 
court  for  justice,  who  rendered  days  of  service  in  his 
demesne.  The  same  tendencies  drew  the  lesser  thegns 
around  the  greater  nobles,  and  these  around  the  provin- 
cial eaJdormen.  The  ealdormen  had  hardly  been  dwarfed 
into  lieutenants  of  the  national  sovereign  before  they 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  89 

again  began  to  rise  into  petty  kings,  and  in  the  century 
which  follows  we  see  Mercian  or  Northumbrian  thegns 
following  a  Mercian  or  Northumbrian  ealdorman  to  the 
field  though  it  were  against  the  lord  of  the  land.  Even 
the  constitutional  forms  which  sprang  from  the  old  Eng- 
lish freedom  tended  to  invest  the  higher  nobles  with  a 
commanding  power.  In  the  "  great  meeting  "  of  the  Wit- 
enagemote  or  Assembly  of  the  Wise  lay  the  rule  of  the 
realm.  It  represented  the  whole  English  people,  as  the 
wise-moots  of  each  kingdom  represented  the  separate  peo- 
ples of  each  ;  and  its  powers  were  as  supreme  in  the  wider 
field  as  theirs  in  the  narrower.  It  could  elect  or  depose 
the  King.  To  it  belonged  the  higher  justice,  the  imposi- 
tion of  taxes,  the  making  of  laws,  the  conclusion  of  trea- 
ties, the  control  of  wars,  the  disposal  of  public  lands,  the 
appointment  of  great  officers  of  state.  But  such  a  meet- 
ing necessarily  differed  greatly  in  constitution  from  the 
Witans  of  the  lesser  kingdoms.  The  individual  freeman, 
save  when  the  host  was  gathered  together,  could  hardly 
take  part  in  its  deliberations.  The  only  relic  of  its  pop- 
ular character  lay  at  last  in  the  ring  of  citizens  who 
gathered  round  the  Wise  Men  at  London  or  Winchester, 
and  shouted  their  "  aye  "  or  "  nay  "  at  the  election  of  a 
king.  Distance  and  the  hardship  of  travel  made  the 
presence  of  the  lesser  thegns  as  rare  as  that  of  the  free- 
men ;  and  the  national  council  practically  shrank  into  a 
gathering  of  the  ealdorrnen^,  the  bishops,  and  the  officers 
of  the  crown. 

The  old  English  democracy  had  thus  all  but  passed 
into  an  oligarchy  of  the  narrowest  kind.  The  feudal 
movement  which  in  other  lands  was  breaking  up  every 
nation  into  a  mass  of  loosely-knit  states  with  nobles  at 
their  head  who  owned  little  save  a  nominal  allegiance  to 
their  king  threatened  to  break  up  England  itself.  What 
hindered  its  triumph  was  the  power  of  the  Crown,  and  it 
is  the  story  of  this  struggle  between  the  monarchy  and 
these  tendencies  to  feudal  isolation  which  fills  the  period 
between  the  death  of  Eadred  and  the  conquest  of  the 
Norman.  It  was  a  struggle  which  England  shared  with 
the  rest  of  the  western  world,  but  its  issue  here  was  a 


90  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

peculiar  one.  In  other  countries  feudalism  won  an  easy 
victory  over  the  central  government.  In  England  alone 
the  monarchy  was  strong  enough  to  hold  feudalism  at  bay. 
Powerful  as  he  might  be,  the  English  ealdorman  never 
succeeded  in  becoming  really  hereditary  or  independent 
of  the  Crown.  Kings  as  weak  as  jEthelred  could  drive 
ealdormen  into  exile  and  could  replace  .  them  by  fresh 
nominees.  If  the  Witenagemote  enabled  the  great  nobles 
to  bring  their  power  to  bear  directly  on  the  Crown,  it 
preserved  at  any  rate  a  feeling  of  national  unity  and  AMIS 
forced  to  back  the  Crown  against  individual  revolt. 
The  Church  too  never  became  feudalized.  The  bishop 
clung  to  the  Crown,  and  the  bishop  remained  a  great  so- 
cial and  political  power.  As  local  in  area  as  the  ealdor- 
man, for  the  province  was  his  diocese  and  he  sat  by  his 
side  in  the  local  Witenagemote,  he  furnished  a  standing 
check  on  the  independence  of  the  great  nobles.  But  if 
feudalism  proved  too  weak  to  conquer  the  monarchy,  it 
was  strong  enough  to  paralyze  its  action.  Neither  of  the 
two  forces  could  master  the  other,  but  each  could  weaken 
the  other,  and  throughout  the  whole  period  of  their  con- 
flict England  lay  a  prey  to  disorder  within  and  to  insult 
from  without. 

The  first  sign  of  these  troubles  was  seen  when  the 
death  of  Eadred  in  955  handed  over  the  realm  to  a  child 
King,  his  nephew  Eadwig.  Eadwig  was  swayed  by  a 
woman  of  high  lineage,  ^Ethelgifu ;  and  the  quarrel 
between  her  and  the  older  counsellors  of  Eadred  broke 
into  open  strife  at  the  coronation  feast.  On  the  young 
King's  insolent  withdrawal  to  her  chamber  Dtinstan, 
at  the  bidding  of  the  Witan,  drew  him  roughly  back 
to  his  seat.  But  the  feast  was  no  sooner  ended  than  a 
sentence  of  outlawry  drove  the  abbot  over  sea,  while  the 
triumph  of  ^Ethelgifu  was  crowned  in  957  by  the  marriage 
of  her  daughter  to  the  King  and  the  spoliation  of  the 
monasteries  which  Dunstan  had  befriended.  As  the  new 
Queen  was  Eadwig's  kinswoman  the  religious  opinion  of 
the  day  regarded  his  marriage  as  incestuous,  and  it  was 
followed  by  a  revolution.  At  the  opening  of  958  Arch- 
bishop Odo  parted  the  King  from  his  wife  by  solemn 


EAKLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.          91 

sentence ;  while  the  Mercians  and  Northumbrians  rose  in 
revolt,  proclaimed  Eadwig's  brother  Eadgar  their  king, 
and  recalled  Dunstan.  The  death  of  Ead  wig  a  few  months 
later  restored  the  unity  of  the  realm  ;  but  his  successor 
Eadgar  was  only  a  boy  of  fourteen  and  throughout  his 
reign  the  actual  direction  of  affairs  lay  in  the  hands  of 
Dunstan,  whose  elevation  to  the  see  of  Canterbury  set  him 
at  the  head  of  the  Church  as  of  the  State.  The  noblest 
tribute  to  his  rule  lies  in  the  silence  of  our  chroniclers. 
His  work  indeed  was  a  work  of  settlement,  and  such  a 
work  was  best  done  by  the  simple  enforcement  of  peace. 
Daring  the  years  of  rest  in  which  the  stern  hand  of  the 
Primate  enforced -justice  and  order  Northman  and  English- 
man drew  together  into  a  single  people.  Their  union  was 
the  result  of  no  direct  policy  of  fusion  ;  on  the  contrary 
Dunstan's  policy  preserved  to  the  conquered  Danelagh 
its  local  rights  and  local  usages.  But  he  recognized 
the  men  of  the  Danelagh  as  Englishmen,  he  employed 
Northmen  in  the  royal  service,  and  promoted  them  to 
high  posts  in  Church  and  State.  For  the  rest  he  trusted 
to  time,  and  time  justified  his  trust.  The  fusion  was 
marked  by  a  memorable  change  in  the  name  of  the 
land.  Slowly  as  the  conquering  tribes  had  learned  to 
know  themselves  by  the  one  national  name  of  English- 
men, they  learned  yet  more  slowly  to  stamp  their  name 
on  the  land  they  had  won.  It  was  not  till  Eadgar's 
day  that  the  name  of  Britain  passed  into  the  name  of 
Eugla-land,  the  land  of  Englishmen,  England.  The  same 
vigorous  rule  which  secured  rest  for  the  country  during 
these  years  of  national  union  told  on  the  growth  of  material 
prosperity.  Commerce  sprang  into  a  wider  life.  Its 
extension  is  seen  in  the  complaint  that  men  learned 
fierceness  from  the  Saxon  of  Germany,  effeminacy  from 
the  Fleming,  and  drunkenness  from  the  Dane.  The  laws 
of  ^Ethelred  which  provide  for  the  protection  and  regu- 
lation of  foreign  trade  only  recognize  a  state  of  things 
which  grew  up  under  Eadgar.  "  Men  of  the  Empire," 
traders  of  Lower  Lorraine  and  the  Rhine-land,  "Men  of 
Rouen,"  traders  from  the  new  Norman  duchy  of  the  Seine, 
were  seen  in  the  streets  of  London.  It  was  in  Eadgar's 


92        HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

day  indeed  that  London  rose  to  the  commercial  greatness 
it  has  held  ever  since. 

Though  Eadgar  reigned  for  sixteen  years,  he  was  still 
in  the  prime  of  manhood  when  he  died  in  975.  His 
death  gave  a  fresh  opening  to  the  great  nobles.  He  had 
bequeathed  the  Crown  to  his  elder  son  Eadward;  but  the 
Ealdorman  of  East  Anglia,  ./Ethel  wine,  rose  at  once  to  set 
a  younger  child,  JEthelred,  on  the  throne.  But  the  two 
primates  of  Canterbury  and  York  who  had  joined  in  setting 
the  crown  on  the  head  of  Eadgar  now  joined  in  setting 
it  on  the  head  of  Eadward,  and  Dunstan  remained  as 
before  master  of  the  realm.  The  boy's  reign  however  was 
troubled  by  strife  between  the  monastic  party  and  their 
opponents  till  in  979  the  quarrel  was  cut  short  by  his 
murder  at  Corfe,  and  with  the  accession  of  ^Ethelred,  the 
power  of  Dunstan  made  way  for  that  of  Ealdorman  JEthel- 
wine  and  the  Queen-mother.  Some  years  of  tranquillity 
followed  this  victory  ;  but  though  JEthelwine  preserved 
order  at  home  he  showed  little  sense  of  the  danger  which 
threatened  from  abroad.  The  North  was  girding  itself  for 
a  fresh  onset  on  England.  The  Scandinavian  peoples  had 
drawn  together  into  their  kingdoms  of  Denmark,  Sweden 
and  Norway  ;  and  it  was  no  longer  in  isolated  bands  but 
in  national  hosts  that  they  were  about  to  seek  conquests 
in  the  South.  As  ^Ethelred  drew  to  manhood  some  chance 
descents  on  the  coast  told  of  this  fresh  stir  in  the  North, 
and  the  usual  result  of  the  Northman's  presence  was  seen 
in  new  risings  among  the  Welsh. 

In  991  Ealdorman  Brihtnoth  of  East  Anglia  felL  in 
battle  with  a  Norwegian  force  at  Maldon,  and  the  with- 
drawal of  the  pirates  had  to  be  bought  by  money. 
^Ethelwine  too  died  at  this  moment,  and  the  death 
of  the  two  Ealdormen  left  JSthelred  free  to  act  as  Kin^. 
But  his  aim  was  rather  to  save  the  Crown  from  his 
nobles  than  England  from  the  Northmen.  Handsome 
and  pleasant  of  address,  the  young  King's  pride  showed 
itself  in  a  string  of  imperial  titles,  and  his  restless  and 
self-confident  temper  drove  him  to  push  the  preten- 
sions of  the  Crown  to  their  furthest  extent.  His  aim 
throughout  his  reign  was  to  free  himself  from  the  dicta- 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  98 

tion  of  the  great  nobles,  and  it  was  his  indifference  to 
their  "  rede "  or  counsel  that  won  him  the  name  of 
"  JEthelred  the  Redeless."  From  the  first  he  struck  boldly 
at  his  foes,  and  ^Elfgar,  the  Ealdorman  of  Mercia  whom 
the  death  of  his  rival  ^Ethelwine  left  supreme  in  the  realm, 
was  driven  by  the  King's  hate  to  desert  to  a  Danish 
force  which  he  was  sent  in  992  to  drive  from  the  coast. 
^Ethelred  turned  from  his  triumph  at  home  to  meet 
the  forces  of  the  Danish  and  Norwegian  Kings,  Swegen 
and  Olaf,  which  anchored  off  London  in  994.  His  policy 
throughout  was  a  policy  of  diplomacy  rather  than  of 
arms,  and  a  treaty  of  subsidy  gave  time  for  intrigues 
which  parted  the  invaders  till  troubles  at  home  drew  both 
again  to  the  North.  ^Ethelred  took  quick  advantage  of 
his  success  at  home  and  abroad  ;  the  place  of  the  great 
ealdormen  in  the  royal  councils  was  taken  by  court-thegns 
in  whom  we  see  the  rudiments  of  a  ministry,  while  the 
King's  fleet  attacked  the  pirates'  haunts  in  Cumberland 
and  the  Cotentin.  But  in  spite  of  all  this  activity  the 
news  of  a  fresh  invasion  found  England  more  weak  and 
broken  than  ever.  The  rise  of  the  "  new  men  "  only 
widened  the  breach  between  the  court  and  the  great 
nobles,  and  their  resentment  showed  itself  in  delays 
which  foiled  every  attempt  of  ^Ethelred  to  meet  the 
pirate-bands  who  still  clung  to  the  coast. 

They  came  probably  from  the  other  side  of  the  Chan- 
nel, and  it  was  to  clear  them  away  as  well  as  secure  him- 
self against  Swegen's  threatened  descent  that  JEthelred 
took  a  step  which  brought  England  in  contact  with  a 
land  over-sea.  Normandy,  where  the  Northmen  had  set- 
tled a  hundred  years  before,  was  now  growing  into  a 
great  power,  and  it  was  to  win  the  friendship  of  Nor- 
mandy and  to  close  its  harbors  against  Swegen  that 
^Ethelred  in  1002  took  the  Norman  Duke's  daughter, 
Emma,  to  wife.  The  same  dread  of  invasion  gave  birth 
to  a  panic  of  treason  from  the  Northern  mercenaries  whom 
the  King  had  drawn  to  settle  in  the  land  as  a  fighting 
force  against  their  brethren  ;  and  an  order  of  JEthelred 
brought  about  a  general  massacre  of  them  on  St.  Brice's 
day.  Wedding  and  murder,  however,  proved  feeble  de- 


94  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

fences  against   Swegen.     His  fleet  reached  the  coast  in 
1003,  and  for  four  years  he  marched  through  the  length 
and  breadth  of  Southern  and  Eastern  England,  "  lighting 
his  war-beacons  as  he  went "  in  blazing  homestead  and 
town.     Then  for  a  heavy  bribe  he  withdrew,  to  prepare 
for  a  later  and  more  terrible  onset.     But  there  was  no 
rest  for  the  realm.     The  fiercest  of  the  Norwegian  jaiis 
took  his  place,  and  from  Wessex  the  war  extended  over 
Mercia  and  East  Anglia.     In  1012  Canterbury  was  taken 
and  sacked,  ^Elfheah  the  Archbishop  dragged  to  Green- 
wich, and  there  in  default  of  ransom  brutally  slain.    The 
Danes  set  him  in  the  midst  of  their  busting,  pelting  him 
with  bones  and  skulls  of  oxen,  till  one  more  pitiful  than 
the  rest  clove  his  head  with  an   axe.     Meanwhile  the 
court  was  torn  with  intrigue  and  strife,  with  quarrels  be- 
tween the  court-thegns  in  their  greed  of  power  and  yet 
fiercer  quarrels  between  these  favorites  and  the  nobles 
whom  they  superseded  in  the  royal  councils.    The  King's 
policy  of  finding  aid  among  his  new  ministers  broke  down 
when  these  became  themselves  ealdormen.     With  their 
local  position  they  took  up  the  feudal  claims  of  independ- 
ence ;  and  Eadric,  whom  ^Ethelred  raised  to  be  Ealdor- 
man    of  Mercia,   became  a   power  that   overawed   the 
Crown.     In   this  paralysis  of  the  central  authority  all 
organization  and  union  was  lost.     "  Shire  would  not  help 
other"  when  Swegen  returned  in  1013.     The  war  was 
terrible  but  short.    Everywhere  the  country  was  pitilessly 
harried,    churches   plundered,  men   slaughtered.      But, 
with  the  one  exception  of  London,  there  was  no  attempt 
at  resistance.     Oxford  and  Winchester  flung  open  their 
gates.     The  thegns  of  Wessex  submitted  to  the  North- 
men at  Bath.     Even  London  was  forced  at  last  to  give 
way,  and  JSthelred  fled  over-sea  to  a  refuge  in  Normandy. 
He  was  soon  called  back  again.     In  the  opening  of 
1014  Swegen  died  suddenly  at  Gainsborough  ;  and  the 
spell  of  terror  was  broken.     The  Witan  recalled  "  their 
own  born  lord,"  and  ^Ethelred  returned  to  see  the  Danish 
fleet  under  Swegen's  son,  Cnut,  sail  away  to  the  North. 
It  was  but  to   plan  a  more  terrible  return.     Youth   of 
nineteen  as  he  was,  Cnut  showed  from  the  first  the  vigor 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  95 

of  his  temper.  Setting  aside  his  brother  he  made  himself 
King  of  Denmark ;  and  at  once  gathered  a  splendid  fleet 
for  a  fresh  attack  on  England,  whose  King  and  nobles 
were  again  at  strife,  and  where  a  bitter  quarrel  between 
Ealdorman  Eadric  of  Mercia  and  ^Ethelred's  son  Eadmund 
Ironside  broke  the  strength  of  the  realm.  The  desertion 
of  Eadric  to  Cnut  as  soon  as  he  appeared  off  the  coast 
threw  open  England  to  his  arms ;  Wessex  and  Mercia 
submitted  to  him ;  and  though  the  loyalty  of  London 
enabled  Eadmund,  when  his  father's  death  raised  him  in 
1016  to  the  throne,  to  struggle  bravely  for  a  few  months 
against  the  Danes,  a  decisive  overthrow  at  Assandun 
and  a  treaty  of  partition  which  this  wrested  from  him  at 
Olney  were  soon  followed  by  the  young  King's  death. 
Cnut  was  left  master  of  the  realm.  His  first  acts  of 
government  showed  little  but  the  temper  of  the  mere 
Northman,  passionate,  revengeful,  uniting  the  guile  of 
the  savage  with  his  thirst  for  blood.  Eadric  of  Mercia, 
whose  aid  had  given  him  the  Crown,  was  felled  by  an 
axe-blow  at  the  King's  signal ;  a  murder  removed  Eadwig, 
the  brother  of  Eadmund  Ironside,  while  the  children  of 
Eadmund  were  hunted  even  into  Hungary  by  his  ruthless 
hate.  But  from  a  savage  such  as  this  the  young  con- 
queror rose  abruptly  into  a  wise  and  temperate  king.  His 
aim  during  twenty  years  seems  to  have  been  to  obliterate 
from  men's  minds  the  foreign  character  of  his  rule  and 
the  bloodshed  in  which  it  had  begun. 

Conqueror  indeed  as  he  was,  the  Dane  was  no  for- 
eigner in  the  sense  that  the  Norman  was  a  foreigner  after 
him.  His  language  differed  little  from  the  English 
tongue.  He  brought  in  no  new  system  of  tenure  or 
government.  Cnut  ruled  in  fact  not  as  a  foreign  con- 
queror but  as  a  native  king.  He  dismissed  his  Danish 
host,  and  retaining  only  a  trained  band  of  household 
troops  or  "  hus-carles "  to  serve  as  a  body-guard  relied 
boldly  for  support  within  his  realm  on  the  justice  and 
good  government  he  secured  it.  He  fell  back  on  "  Eadgar's 
Law,"  on  the  old  constitution  of  the  realm,  for  his  rule 
of  government ;  and  owned  no  difference  between  Dane 
and  Englishman  among  his  subjects.  He  identified 


96  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

himself  even  with  the  patriotism  which  had  withstood 
the  stranger.  The  Church  had  been  the  centre  of  the 
national  resistance ;  Archbishop  ^Elfheah  had  been  slain 
by  Danish  hands.  But  Cnut  sought  the  friendship  of 
the  Church ;  he  translated  jElfheah's  body  with  great 
pomp  to  Canterbury  ;  he  atoned  for  his  father's  ravages 
by  gifts  to  the  religious  houses ;  he  protected  English 
pilgrims  even  against  the  robber-lords  of  the  Alps.  His 
love  for  monks  broke  out  in  a  song  which  he  composed  as 
he  listened  to  their  chaunt  at  Ely.  "  Merrily  sang  the 
monks  of  Ely  when  Cnut  King  rowed  by  "  across  the 
vast  fen-waters  that  surrounded  their  abbey ^  "  Row, 
boatmen,  near  the  land,  and  hear  we  these  monks  sing." 
A  letter  which  Cnut  wrote  after  twelve  years  of  rule  to 
his  English  subjects  marks  the  grandeur  of  his  character 
and  the  noble  conception  he  had  formed  of  kingship. 
"  I  have  vowed  to  God  to  lead  a  right  life  in  all  things," 
wrote  the  King,  "  to  rule  justly  and  piously  my  realms 
and  subjects,  and  to  administer  just  judgment  to  all. 
If  heretofore  I  have  done  aught  beyond  what  was  just, 
through  headiness  or  negligence  of  youth,  I  am  ready, 
with  God's  help,  to  amend  it  utterly."  No  royal  officer, 
either  for  fear  of  the  King  or  for  favor  of  any,  is  to 
consent  to  injustice,  none  is  to  do  wrong  to  rich  or  poor 
"  as  they  would  value  my  friendship  and  their  own  well- 
being."  He  especially  denounces  unfair  exactions :  "  I 
have  no  need  that  money  be  heaped  together  for  me  by 
unjust  demands."  "  I  have  sent  this  letter  before  me." 
Cnut  ends,  "  that  all  the  people  of  my  realm  may  rejoice 
in  my  well-doing ;  for  as  you  yourselves  know,  never 
have  I  spared,  nor  will  I  spare,  to  spend  myself  and  my 
toil  in  what  is  needful  and  good  for  my  people." 

Cnut's  greatest  gift  to  his  people  was  that  of  peace. 
With  him  began  the  long  internal  tranquillity  which  was 
from  this  time  to  be  the  key-note  of  the  national  history. 
Without,  the  Dane  was  no  longer  a  terror;  on  the  con- 
trary it  was  English  ships  and  English  soldiers  who  now 
appeared  in  the  North  and  folio  wed  Cnut  in  his  campaigns 
against  Wend  or  Norwegian.  Within,  the  exhaustion 
which  follows  a  long  anarchy  gave  fresh  strength  to  the 


EARLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  97 

Crown,  and  Cmit's  own  ruling  temper  was  backed  by  the 
force  of  hus-carles  at  his  disposal.  The  four  Earls  of 
Northumberland,  Mercia,  Wessex,  and  East  Anglia, 
whom  he  set  in  the  place  of  the  older  ealdormen,  knew 
themselves  to  be  the  creatures  of  his  will;  the  ablest 
indeed  of  their  number,  Godwine,  Earl  of  Wessex,  was 
the  minister  or  close  counsellor  of  the  King.  The 
troubles  along  the  Northern  border  were  ended  by  a 
memorable  act  of  policy.  From  Eadgar's  day  the  Scots 
had  pressed  further  and  further  across  the  Firth  of  Forth 
till  a  victory  of  their  King  Malcolm  over  Earl  Eadwulf 
at  Carham  in  1018  made  him  master  of  Northern  North- 
umbria.  In  1031  Cnut  advanced  to  the  North,  but  the 
quarrel  ended  in  a  formal  cession  of  the  district  between 
the  Forth  and  the  Tweed,  Lothian  as  it  was  called,  to 
the  Scot-King  on  his  doing  domage  to  Cnut.  The  gain 
told  at  once  on  the  character  of  the  Northern  kingdom. 
The  Kings  of  the  Scots  had  till  now  been  rulers  simply 
of  Gaelic  and  Celtic  peoples  ;  but  from  the  moment  that 
Lothian  with  its  English  farmers  and  English  seamen 
became  a  part  of  their  dominions  it  became  the  most 
important  part.  The  Kings  fixed  their  seat  at  Edinburgh, 
and  in  the  midst  of  an  English  population  passed  from 
Gaelic  chieftains  into  the  Saxon  rulers  of  a  mingled 
people. 

But  the  greatness  of  Cnut's  rule  hung  solely  on  the 
greatness  of  his  temper,  and  the  Danish  power  was  shaken 
by  his  death  in  1G35.  The  empire  he  had  built  up  at 
once  fell  to  pieces.  He  had  bequeathed  both  England 
and  Denmark  to  his  son  Harthacnut ;  but  the  boy's 
absence  enabled  his  brother,  Harold  Harefoot,  to  acquire 
all  England  save  God  wine's  earldom  of  Wessex,  and  in 
the  end  even  Godwine  was  forced  to  submit  to  him. 
Harold's  death  in  1040  averted  a  conflict  between  the 
brothers,  and  placed  Harthacnut  quietly  on  the  throne. 
But  the  love  which  Cnut's  justice  had  won  turned  to 
hatred  before  the  lawlessness  of  his  successors.  The 
long  peace  sickened  men  of  their  bloodshed  and  violence. 
"  Never  was  a  bloodier  deed  done  in  the  land  since  the 
Danes  came,"  ran  a  popular  song,  when  Harold's  men 


98  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

seized  ^Elfred,  a  brother  of  Eadmund  Ironside,  who 
returned  to  England  from  Normandy  where  he  had 
found  a  refuge  since  his  father's  flight  to  its  shores. 
Every  tenth  man  among  his  followers  was  killed,  the  rest 
sold  for  slaves,  and  Alfred's  eyes  torn  out  at  Ely. 
Harthacnut,  more  savage  than  his  predecessor,  dug  up 
his  brother's  body  and  flung  it  into  a  marsh ;  while  a 
rising  at  Worcester  against  his  hus-carles  was  punished 
by  the  burning  of  the  town  and  the  pillage  of  the  shire. 
The  young  King's  death  was  no  less  brutal  than  his  life  ; 
in  1042  "  he  died  as  he  stood  at  his  drink  in  the  house  of 
Osgod  Clapa  at  Lambeth."  England  wearied  of  rulers 
such  as  these :  but  their  crimes  helped  her  to  free  herself 
from  the  impossible  dream  of  Cnut.  The  North,  still  more 
barbarous  than  herself,  could  give  her  no  new  element  of 
progress  or  civilization.  It  was  the  consciousness  of  this 
and  a  hatred  of  rulers  such  as  Harold  and  Harthacnut 
which  co-operated  with  the  old  feeling  of  reverence  for 
the  past  in  calling  back  the  line  of  JElfred  to  the  throne. 
It  is  in  such  transitional  moments  of  a  nation's  his- 
tory that  it  needs  the  cool  prudence,  the  sensitive  selfish- 
ness, the  quick  perception  of  what  is  possible,  which  dis- 
tinguished the  adroit  politician  whom  the  death  of  Cnut 
left  supreme  in  England.  Originally  of  obscure  origin, 
Godwine's  ability  had  raised  him  high  in  the  royal  favor  ; 
he  was  allied  to  Cnut  by  marriage,  entrusted  by  him  with 
the  earldom  of  Wessex,  and  at  last  made  the  Viceroy  or 
justiciar  of  the  King  in  the  government  of  the  realm.  In 
the  wars  of  Scandinavia  he  had  shown  courage  and  skill 
at  the  head  of  a  body  of  English  troops,  but  his  true  field 
of  action  lay  at  home.  Shrewd,  eloquent,  an  active  ad- 
ministrator, God  wine  united  vigilance,  industry  and 
caution  with  a  singular  dexterity  in  the  management  of 
men.  During  the  troubled  years  that  followed  the  death 
of  Cnut  he  did  his  best  to  continue  his  master's  policy 
in  securing  the  internal  union  of  England  under  a  Danish 
sovereign  and  in  preserving  her  connexion  with  the 
North.  But  at  the  death  of  Harthacnut  Cnut's  policy 
had  become  impossible,  and  abandoning  the  Danish  cause 
God  wine  drifted  with  the  tide  of  popular  feeling  which 


EABLY  ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  99 

called  Eadward,  the  one  living  son  of  ./Ethelred,  to  the 
throne.  Eadward  had  lived  from  his  youth  in  exile  at 
the  court  of  Normandy.  A  halo  of  tenderness  spread  in 
after-time  round  this  last  King  of  the  old  English  stock  ; 
legends  told  of  his  pious  simplicity,  his  blitheness  and 
gentleness  of  mood,  the  holiness  that  gained  him  his 
name  of  "Confessor"  and  enshrined  him  as  a  Saint  in 
his  abbey-church  at  Westminster.  Gleemen  sang  in  man- 
lier tones  of  the  long  peace  and  glories  of  his  reign,  how 
warriors  and  wise  counsellors  stood  round  his  throne,  and 
Welsh  and  Scot,  and  Briton  obeyed  him.  His  was  the 
one  figure  that  stood  out  bright  against  the  darkness 
when  England  lay  trodden  under  foot  by  Norman  con- 
querors ;  and  so  dear  became  his  memory  that  liberty  and 
independence  itself  seemed  incarnate  in  his  name.  Instead 
of  freedom,  the  subjects  of  William  or  Henry  called  for 
the  "  good  laws  of  Eadward  the  Confessor."  But  it  was 
a  mere  shadow  of  the  past  that  the  exile  u-ally  returned 
to  the  throne  of  jElfred  ;  there  was  something  shadow- 
like  in  his  thin  form,  his  delicate  complexion,  his  trans- 
parent womanly  hands;  and  it  is  almost  as  a  shadow  that 
he  glides  over  the  political  stage.  The  work  of  govern- 
ment was  done  by  sterner  hands. 

Throughout  his  earlier  reign,  in  fact,  England  lay  in 
the  hands  of  its  three  Earls,  Siward  of  Northumbria, 
Leofric  of  Mercia,  and  God  wine  of  Wessex,  and  it  seemed 
as  if  the  feudal  tendency  to  provincial  separation  against 
which  JEthelred  had  struggled  was  to  triumph  with  the 
death  of  Cnut.  What  hindered  this  severance  was  the 
greed  of  Godwine.  Siward  was  isolated  in  the  North : 
Leofric's  earldom  was  but  a  fragment  of  Mercia.  But  the 
Earl  of  Wessex,  already  master  of  the  wealthiest  part  of 
England,  seized  district  after  district  for  his  house.  His 
son  Swegen  secured  an  earldom  in  the  south-west;  his 
son  Harold  became  Earl  of  East  Anglia  ;  his  nephew 
Beorn  was  established  in  Central  England  :  while  the 
marriage  of  his  daughter  Eadgyth  to  the  King  himself 
gave  Godwine  a  hold  upon  the  throne.  Policy  led  the 
Earl,  as  it  led  his  son,  rather  to  aim  at  winning  England 
itself  than  at  breaking  up  England  to  win  a  mere  fief  in 


100  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

it.  But  his  aim  found  a  sudden  check  through  the  law- 
lessness of  his  son  Swegen.  Swegen  seduced  the  abbess 
of  Leominster,  sent  her  home  again  with  a  yet  more  out- 
rageous demand  of  her  hand  in  marriage,  and  on  the 
King's  refusal  to  grant  it  fled  from  the  realm.  Godwine's 
influence  secured  his  pardon,  but  on  his  very  return  to 
seek  it  Swegen  murdered  his  cousin  Beorn  who  had  op- 
posed the  reconciliation  and  again  fled  to  Flanders,  A 
storm  of  national  indignation  followed  him  over-sea.  The 
meeting  of  the  Wise  men  branded  him  as  "  nithing,"  the 
"  utterly  worthless,"  yet  in  a  year  his  father  wrested  a 
new  pardon  from  the  King  and  restored  him  to  his  earl- 
dom. The  scandalous  inlawing  of  such  a  criminal  left 
God  wine  alone  in  a  struggle  which  soon  arose  with  Ead- 
ward  himself.  The  King  was  a  stranger  in  his  realm, 
and  his  sympathies  lay  naturally  with  the  home  and 
friends  of  his  youth  and  exile.  He  spoke  the  Norman 
tongue.  He  used  in  Norman  fashion  a  seal  for  his 
charters.  He  set  Norman  favorites  in  the  highest  posts 
of  Church  and  State.  Foreigners  such  as  these,  though 
hostile  to  the  minister,  were  powerless  against  Godwine's 
influence  and  ability,  and  when  at  a  later  time  they  ven- 
tured to  stand  alone  against  him  they  fell  without  a  blow. 
But  the  general  ill-will  at  Swegen's  inlawing  enabled 
them  to  stir  Eadward  to  attack  the  Earl,  and  in  1051  a 
trivial  quarrel  brought  the  opportunity  of  a  decisive  break 
with  him.  On  his  return  from  a  visit  to  the  court  Eustace, 
Count  of  Boulogne,  the  husband  of  the  King's  sister, 
demanded  quarters  for  his  train  in  Dover.  Strife  arose, 
and  many  both  of  the  burghers  and  foreigners  were  slain. 
All  Godwine's  better  nature  withstood  Eadward  when 
the  King  angrily  bade  him  exact  vengeance  from  the 
town  for  the  affront  of  his  kinsman  ;  and  he  claimed  a 
fair  trial  for  the  townsmen.  But  Eadward  looked  on  his 
refusal  as  an  outrage,  and  the  quarrel  widened  into  open 
strife.  Godwine  at  once  gathered  his  forces  and  marched 
upon  Gloucester,  demanding  the  expulsion  of  the  foreign 
favorites.  But  even  in  a  just  quarrel  the  country  was 
cold  in  his  support.  The  Earls  of  Mercia  and  Northum- 
berland united  their  forces  to  those  of  Eadward  at  Glou- 


EARLY  ENGLAND.   449 — 1071.         101 

cester,  and  marched  with  the  King  to  a  gathering  of  the 
Witenagemote  at  London.  Godwine  again  appeared  in 
arras,  but  Swegen's  outlawry  was  renewed,  and  the  Earl 
of  Wessex,  declining  with  his  usual  prudence  a  useless 
struggle,  withdrew  over-sea  to  Flanders. 

But  the  wrath  of  the  nation  was  appeased  by  his  fall. 
Great  as  were  Godwine's  faults,  he  was  the  one  man  who 
now  stood  between  England  and  the  rule  of  the  strangers 
who  flocked  to  the  Court ;  and  a  year  had  hardly  passed 
when  he  was  strong  enough  to  return.  At  the  appear- 
ance of  his  fleet  in  the  Thames  in  1052  Eadward  was 
once  more  forced  to  yield.  The  foreign  prelates  and 
bishops  fled  over-sea,  outlawed  by  the  same  meeting  of 
the  Wise  men  which  restored  Godwine  to  his  home.  But 
he  returned  only  to  die,  and  the  direction  of  affairs 
passed  quietly  to  his  son  Harold.  Harold  came  to  power 
unfettered  by  the  obstacles  which  beset  his  father,  and 
for  twelve  years  he  was  the  actual  governor  of  the  realm. 
The  courage,  the  ability,  the  genius  for  administration, 
the  ambition  and  subtlety  of  Godwine  were  found  again 
in  his  son.  In  the  internal  government  of  England  he 
followed  out  his  father's  policy  while  avoiding  its  ex- 
cesses. Peace  was  preserved,  justice  administered,  and 
the  realm  increased  in  wealth  and  prosperity.  Its  gold 
work  and  embroidery  became  famous  in  the  markets  of 
Flanders  and  France.  Disturbances  from  without  were 
crushed  sternly  and  rapidly  ;  Harold's  military  talents 
displayed  themselves  in  a  campaign  against  Wales,  and 
in  the  boldness  and  rapidity  with  which,  arming  his  troops 
with  weapons  adapted  for  mountain  conflict,  he  pene- 
trated to  the  heart  of  its  fastnesses  and  reduced  the 
country  to  complete  submission.  With  the  gift  of  the 
Northumbrian  earldom  on  Siward's  death  to  his  brother 
Tostig  all  England  save  a  small  part  of  the  older  Mercia 
lay  in  the  hands  of  the  house  of  Godwine,  and  as  the 
waning  health  of  the  King,  the  death  of  his  nephew,  the 
son  of  Eaclmund  who  had  returned  from  Hungary  as  his 
heir,  and  the  childhood  of  the  ^Etheling  Eadgar  who 
stood  next  in  blood,  removed  obstacle  after  obstacle  to 
his  plans,  Harold  patiently  but  steadily  moved  forward 
to  the  throne. 


102  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

But  his  advance  was  watched  by  one  even  more  able 
and  ambitious  than  himself.  For  the  last  half  century 
England  had  been  drawing  nearer  to  the  Norman  land 
which  fronted  it  across  the  Channel.  As  we  pass  now- 
adays through  Normandy,  it  is  English  history  which  is 
round  about  us.  The  name  of  hamlet  after  hamlet  has 
memories  for  English  ears ;  a  fragment  of  castle  wall 
marks  the  home  of  the  Bruce,  a  tiny  village  preserves 
the  name  of  the  Percy.  The  very  look  of  the  country 
and  its  people  seem  familiar  to  us  ;  the  Norman  peasant 
in  his  cap  and  blouse  recalls  the  build  and  features  of  the 
small  English  farmer ;  the  fields  about  Caen,  with  their 
dense  hedgerows,  their  elms,  their  apple-orchards,  are  the 
very  picture  of  an  English  country-side.  Huge  cathe- 
drals lift  themselves  over  the  red-tiled  roofs  of  little 
market  towns,  the  models  of  stately  fabrics  which  super- 
seded the  lowlier  churches  of  ^Elfred  or  Dunstan,  while 
the  windy  heights  that  look  over  orchard  and  meadow- 
land  are  crowned  with  the  square  gray  keeps  which  Nor- 
mandy gave  to  the  cliffs  of  Richmond  and  the  banks  of 
Thames.  It  was  Rolf  the  Ganger,  or  Walker,  a  pirate 
leader  like  Guthrum  or  Hasting,  who  wrested  this  land 
from  the  French  king,  Charles  the  Simple,  in  912,  at  the 
moment  when  jElfred's  children  were  beginning  their 
conquest  of  the  English  Danelagh.  The  treaty  of  Clair- 
on-Epte  in  which  France  purchased  peace  by  this  cession 
of  the  coast  was  a  close  imitation  of  the  Peace  of  Wed- 
more.  Rolf,  like  Guthrum,  was  baptized,  received  the 
King's  daughter  in  marriage,  and  became  his  vassal  for 
the  territory  which  now  took  the  name  of  "  the  North- 
man's land  "  or  Normandy.  But  vassalage  and  the  new 
faith  sat  lightly  on  the  Dane.  No  such  ties  of  blood  and 
speech  tended  to  unite  the  Northman  with  the  French 
among  whom  he  settled  along  the  Seine  as  united  him 
to  the  Englishmen  among  whom  he  settled  along  the 
Humber.  William  Longsword,  the  son  of  Rolf,  though 
wavering  towards  France  and  Christianity,  remained  a 
Northman  in  heart ;  he  called  in  a  Danish  colony  to 
occupy  his  conquest  of  the  Cotentin,  the  peninsula  which 
runs  out  from  St.  Michaels'  Mount  to  the  cliffs  of  Cher- 


EARLY  ENGLAND.    449—1071.  103 

bourg,  and  reared  his  boy  among  the  Northmen  of 
Bayeux  where  the  Danish  tongue  and  fashions  most 
stubbornly  held  their  own.  A  heathen  reaction  followed 
his  death,  and  the  bulk  of  the  Normans,  with  the  child 
Duke  Richard,  fell  away  for  the  time  from  Christianity, 
while  new  pirate-fleets  came  swarming  up  the  Seine. 
To  the  close  of  the  century  the  whole  people  were  still 
"  Pirates "  to  the  French  around  them,  their  land  the 
"Pirates'  land,"  their  Duke  the  "Pirates'  Duke."  Yet 
in  the  end  the  same  forces  which  merged  the  Dane  in 
the  Englishman  told  even  more  powerfully  on  the  Dane 
in  France.  No  race  has  ever  shown  a  greater  power  of 
absorbing  all  the  nobler  characteristics  of  the  peoples 
with  whom  they  came  in  contact,  or  of  infusing  their 
own  energy  into  them.  During  the  long  reign  of  Duke 
Richard  the  Fearless,  the  son  of  William  Longsword,  a 
reign  which  lasted  from  945  to  996,  the  heathen  North- 
men pirates  became  French  Christians  and  feudal  at 
heart.  The  old  Norse  language  lived  only  at  Bayeux 
and  in  a  few  local  names.  As  the  old  Northern  freedom 
died  silently  away,  the  descendants  of  the  pirates  be- 
came feudal  nobles  and  the  "  Pirates'  land "  sank  into 
the  most  loyal  of  the  fiefs  of  France. 

From  the  moment  of  their  settlement  on  the  Frankish 
coast,  the  Normans  had  been  jealously  watched  by  the 
English  kings;  and  the  anxiety  of  JEthelred  for  their 
friendship  set  a  Norman  woman  on  the  English  throne. 
The  marriage  of  Emma  with  JEthelred  brought  about  a 
close  political  connection  between  the  two  countries.  It 
was  in  Normandy  that  the  King  found  a  refuge  from 
Swegen's  invasion,  and  his  younger  boys  grew  up  in 
exile  at  the  Norman  court.  Their  presence  there  drew 
the  eyes  of  every  Norman  to  the  rich  land  which  offered 
so  tempting  a  prey  across  the  Channel.  The  energy 
which  they  had  shown  in  winning  their  land  from  the 
Franks,  in  absorbing  the  French  civilization  and  the 
French  religion,  was  now  showing  itself  in  adventures 
on  far-off  shores,  in  crusades  against  the  Moslem  of  Spain 
or  the  Arabs  of  Sicily.  It  was  this  spirit  of  adventure 
that  roused  the  Norman  Duke  Robert  to  sail  against 


104  HISTORY  OF    THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

England  in  Cnut's  day  under  pretext  of  setting  jJEthel- 
rcd's  children  on  its  throne,  but  the  wreck  of  his  fleet  in 
a  storm  put  an  end  to  a  project  which  might  have  antici- 
pated the  work  of  his  son.  It  was  that  son,  William  the 
Great,  as  men  of  his  own  day  styled  him,  William  the 
Conqueror  as  he  was  to  stamp  himself  by  one  event  on 
English  history,  who  was  now  Duke  of  Normandy.  The 
full  grandeur  of  his  indomitable  will,  his  large  and 
patient  statesmanship,  the  loftiness  of  aim  which  lifts 
him  out  of  the  petty  incidents  of  his  age,  were  as  yet 
only  partly  disclosed.  But  there  never  had  been  a 
moment  from  his  boyhood  when  he  was  not  among  the 
greatest  of  men.  His  life  from  the  very  first  was  one 
long  mastering  of  difficulty  after  difficulty.  The  shame 
of  his  birth  remained  in  his  name  of  "  the  Bastard."  His 
father  Robert  had  seen  Arlotta,  a  tanner's  daughter  of 
the  town,  as  she  washed  her  linen  in  a  little  brook  by 
Falaise  ;  and  loving  her  he  had  made  her  the  mother  of 
his  boy.  The  departure  of  Robert  on  a  pilgrimage  from 
which  he  never  returned  left  William  a  child-ruler 
among  the  most  turbulent  baronage  in  Christendom ; 
treason  and  anarchy  surrounded  him  as  he  grew  to  man- 
hood ;  and  disorder  broke  at  last  into  open  revolt.  But 
in  1047  a  fierce  combat  of  horse  on  the  slopes  of  Val-e"s- 
dunes  beside  Caen  left  the  young  Duke  master  of  his 
duchy  and  he  soon  made  his  mastery  felt.  "  Normans," 
said  a  Norman  poet,  "  must  be  trodden  down  and  kept 
under  foot,  for  he  only  that  bridles  them  may  use  them 
at  his  need."  In  the  stern  order  he  forced  on  the  land 
Normandy  from  this  hour  felt  the  bridle  of  its  Duke. 

Secure  at  home,  William  seized  the  moment  of  God- 
wine's  exile  to  visit  England,  and  received  from  his 
cousin,  King  Eadward,  as  he  afterwards  asserted,  a 
promise  of  succession  to  his  throne.  Such  a  promise 
however,  unconfirmed  by  the  Witenagemote,  was  value- 
less ;  and  the  return  of  Godwine  must  have  at  once  cut 
short  the  young  Duke's  hopes.  He  found  in  fact  work 
enough  to  do  in  his  own  duchy,  for  the  discontent  of  his 
baronage  at  the  stern  justice  of  his  rule  found  support 
in  the  jealousy  which  his  power  raised  in  the  states 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  105 

around  him,  and  it  was  only  after  two  great  victories  at 
Mortemer  and  Varaville  and  six  years  of  hard  fighting 
that  outer  and  inner  foes  were  alike  trodden  under  foot. 
In  1060  William  stood  first  among  the  princes  of  France. 
Maine  submitted  to  his  rule.  Britanny  was  reduced  to 
obedience  by  a  single  inarch.  While  some  of  the  rebel 
barons  rotted  in  the  Duke's  dungeons  and  some  were 
driven  into  exile,  the  land  settled  down  into  a  peace 
which  gave  room  for  a  quick  upgrowth  of  wealth  and 
culture.  Learning  and  education  found  their  centre  iu 
the  school  of  Bee,  which  the  teaching  of  a  Lombard 
scholar,  Lan franc,  raised  in  a  few  years  into  the  most 
famous  school  of  Christendom.  Lanfranc's  first  contact 
with  William,  if  it  showed  the  Duke's  imperious  temper, 
showed  too  his  marvellous  insight  into  men.  In  a  strife 
with  the  Papacy  which  William  provoked  by  his  mar- 
riage with  Matilda,  a  daughter  of  the  Count  of  Flanders, 
Lanfranc  took  the  side  of  Rome.  His  opposition  was 
met  by  a  sentence  of  banishment,  and  the  Prior  had 
hardly  set  out  on  a  lame  horse,  the  only  one  his  house 
could  afford,  when  he  was  overtaken  by  the  Duke,  im- 
patient that  he  should  quit  Normandy.  "Give  me  a 
better  horse  and  I  shall  go  the  quicker,"  replied  the  im- 
perturbable Lombard,  and  William's  wrath  passed  into 
laughter  and  good  will.  From  that  hour  Lanfranc  be- 
came his  minister  and  counsellor,  whether  for  affairs  in 
the  duchy  itself  or  for  the  more  daring  schemes  of  ambi- 
tion which  opened  up  across  the  Channel. 

William's  hopes  of  the  English  crown  are  said  to  have 
been  revived  by  a  storm  which  threw  Harold,  while 
cruising  in  the  Channel,  on  the  coast  of  Ponthieu.  Its 
count  sold  him  to  the  Duke  ;  and  as  the  price  of  return 
to  England  William  forced  him  to  swear  on  the  relics  of 
saints  to  support  his  claim  to  its  throne.  But,  true  or 
no,  the  oath  told  little  on  Harold's  course.  As  the  child- 
less King  drew  to  his  grave  one  obstacle  after  another  was 
cleared  from  the  Earl's  path.  His  brother  Tostig  had 
become  his  most  dangerous  rival ;  but  a  revolt  of  the 
Northumbrians  drove  Tostig  to  Flanders,  and  the  Earl 
was  able  to  win  over  the  Mercian  house  of  Leofric  to  his 


106  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

cause  by  owning  Morkere,  the  brother  of  the  Mercian 
Earl  Eadwine,  as  his  brother's  successor.  His  aim  was  in 
fact  attained  without  a  struggle.  In  the  opening  of  1066 
the  nobles  and  bishops  who  gathered  round  the  death-bed 
of  the  Confessor  passed  quietly  from  it  to  the  election 
and  coronation  of  Harold.  But  at  Rouen  the  news  was 
welcomed  with  a  burst  of  furious  passion,  and  the  Duke  of 
Normandy  at  once  prepared  to  enforce  his  claim  by  arms. 
William  did  not  claim  the  Crown.  He  claimed  simply  the 
right  which  he  afterwards  used  when  his  sword  had  won 
it  of  presenting  himself  for  election  by  the  nation,  and 
he  believed  himself  entitled  so  to  present  himself  by  the 
direct  commendation  of  the  Confessor.  The  actual  elec- 
tion of  Harold  which  stood  in  his  way,  hurried  as  it  was, 
he  did  not  recognize  as  valid.  But  with  this  constitu- 
tional claim  was  inextricably  mingled  resentment  at  the 
private  wrong  which  Harold  had  done  him,  and  a  resolve 
to  exact  vengeance  on  the  man  whom  he  regarded  as 
untrue  to  his  oath.  The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  his 
enterprise  were  indeed  enormous.  He  could  reckon  on  no 
support  within  England  itself.  At  home  he  had  to  extort 
the  consent  of  his  own  reluctant  baronage  ;  to  gather  a 
motley  host  from  every  quarter  of  France  and  to  keep  it 
together  for  months  ;  to  create  a  fleet,  to  cut  down  the 
very  trees,  to  build,  to  launch,  to  man  the  vessels  ;  and  to 
find  time  amidst  all  this  for  the  common  business  of  gov- 
ernment, for  negotiations  with  Denmark  and  the  Empire, 
with  France,  Britanny,  and  Anjou,  with  Flanders  and 
with  Rome  which  had  been  estranged  from  England  by 
Archbishop  Stigand's  acceptance  of  his  pallium  from  one 
who  was  not  owned  as  a  canonical  Pope. 

But  his- rival's  difficulties  were  hardly  less  than  his  own. 
Harold  was  threatened  with  invasion  not  only  by  William 
but  by  his  brother  Tostig,  who  had  taken  refuge  in 
Norway  and  secured  the  aid  of  its  King,  Harald  Har- 
drada.  The  fleet  and  army  he  had  gathered  lay  watch- 
ing for  months  along  the  coast.  His  one  standing  force 
was  his  body  of  hus-carles,  but  their  numbers  only  enabled 
them  to  act  as  the  nucleus  of  an  army.  On  the  other 
hand  the  Land-fyrd  or  general  levy  of  fighting-men  was  a 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 — 1071.  107 

body  easy  to  raise  for  any  single  encounter  but  hard  to 
keep  together.  To  assemble  such  a  force  was  to  bring 
labor  to  a  standstill.  The  men  gathered  under  the 
King's  standard  were  the  farmers  and  ploughmen  of  their 
fields.  The  ships  were  the  fishing-vessels  of  the  coast. 
In  September  the  task  of  holding  them  together  became 
impossible,  but  their  dispersion  had  hardly  taken  place 
when  the  two  clouds  which  had  so  long  been  gathering 
burst  at  once  upon  the  realm.  A  change  of  wind  released 
the  landlocked  armament  of  William ;  but  before  chang- 
ing, the  wind  which  prisoned  the  Duke  brought  the  host 
of  Tostig  and  Harald  Hardrada  to  the  coast  of  Yorkshire, 
The  King  hastened  with  his  household  troops  to  the  north 
and  repulsed  the  Norwegians  in  a  decisive  overthrow  at 
Stamford  Bridge,  but  ere  he  could  hurry  back  to  London 
the  Norman  host  had  crossed  the  sea  and  William,  who 
had  anchored  on  the  twenty-eighth  of  September  off 
Pevensey,  was  ravaging  the  coast  to  bring  his  rival  to  an 
engagement.  His  merciless  ravages  succeeded  in  draw- 
ing Harold  from  London  to  the  south ;  but  the  King 
wisely  refused  to  attack  with  the  troops  he  had  hastily 
summoned  to  his  banner.  If  he  was  forced  to  give  battle, 
he  resolved  to  give  it  on  ground  he  had  himself  chosen, 
and  advancing  near  enough  to  the  coast  to  check  Wii 
liam's  ravages  he  entrenched  himself  on  a  hill  known 
afterwards  as  that  of  Senlac,  a  low  spur  of  the  Sussex 
downs  near  Hastings.  His  position  covered  London  and 
drove  William  to  concentrate  his  forces.  With  a  host 
subsisting  by  pillage,  to  concentrate  is  to  starve ;  and  no 
alternative  was  left  to  the  Duke  but  a  decisive  victory  or 
ruin. 

On  the  fourteenth  of  October  William  led  his  men  at 
dawn  along  the  higher  ground  that  leads  from  Hastings 
to  the  battle-field  which  Harold  had  chosen.  From  the 
mound  of  Telham  the  Normans  saw  the  host  of  the  Eng- 
lish gathered  thickly  behind  a  rough  trench  and  a  stock- 
ade on  the  height  of  Senlac.  Marshy  ground  covered  their 
right ;  on  the  left,  the  most  exposed  part  of  the  position, 
the  hus-caiies  or  body-guard  of  Harold,  men  in  full  armor 
and  wielding  huge  axes,  were  grouped  round  the  Golden 


108  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Dragon  of  Wessex  and  the  Standard  of  the  King.  The 
rest  of  the  ground  was  covered  by  thick  masses  of  half- 
armed  rustics  who  had  flocked  at  Harold's  summons  to  the 
fight  with  the  stranger.  It  was  against  the  centre  of  this 
formidable  position  that  William  arrayed  his  Norman 
knighthood,  while  the  mercenary  forces  he  had  gathered 
in  France  and  Britanny  were  ordered  to  attack  its  flanks. 
A  general  charge  of  the  Norman  foot  opened  the  battle  ; 
in  front  rode  the  minstrel  Taillefer,  tossing  his  sword  in 
the  air  and  catching  it  again  while  he  chaunted  the  song 
of  Roland.  He  was  the  first  of  the  host  who  struck  a 
blow,  and  he  was  the  first  to  fall.  The  charge  broke  vainly 
on  the  stout  stockade  behind  which  the  English  warriors 
plied  axe  and  javelin  with  fierce  cries  of  "  Out,  out,"  and 
the  repulse  of  the  Norman  footmen  was  followed  by  a  re- 
pulse of  the  Norman  horse.  Again  and  again  the  Duke 
rallied  and  led  them  to  the  fatal  stockade.  All  the  fury  of 
fight  that  glowed  in  his  Norseman's  blood,  all  the  head- 
long valor  that  spurred  him  over  the  slopes  of  Val-es- 
dunes,  mingled  that  day  with  the  coolness  of  head,  the 
dogged  perseverance,  the  inexhaustible  faculty  of  resource 
which  shone  at  Mortemer  and  Varaville.  His  Breton 
troops,  entangled  in  the  marshy  ground  on  his  left  broke 
in  disorder,  and  as  panic  spread  through  the  army  a  cry 
arose  that  the  Duke  was  slain.  William  tore  off  his 
helmet ;  "  I  live,"  he  shouted,  "  and  by  God's  help  I  will 
conquer  yet."  Maddened  by  a  fresh  repulse,  the  Duke 
spurred  right  at  the  Standard  ;  unhorsed,  his  terrible 
mace  struck  down  Gyrth,  the  King's  brother ;  again  dis- 
mounted, a  blow  from  his  hand  hurled  to  the  ground  an 
unmannerly  rider  who  would  not  lend  him  his  steed. 
Amidst  the  roar  and  tumult  of  the  battle  he  turned  the 
flight  he  had  arrested  into  the  means  of  victory.  Broken 
as  the  stockade  was  by  his  desperate  onset,  the  shield-wall 
of  the  warriors  behind  it  still  held  the  Normans  at  bay 
till  William  by  a  feint  of  flight  drew  a  part  of  the  English 
force  from  their  post  of  vantage.  Turning  on  his  disor- 
derly pursuers,  the  Duke  cut  them  to  pieces,  broke  through 
the  abandoned  line,  and  made  himself  master  of  the  cen- 
tral ground.  Meanwhile  the  French  and  Bretons  made 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449 1071. 

good  their  ascent  on  either  flank.  At  three  the  hill  seemed 
won,  at  six  the  fight  still  raged  around  the  Standard 
where  Harold's  hus-carles  stood  stubbornly  at  bay  on  a 
spot  marked  afterwards  by  the  high  altar  of  Battle  Abbey. 
An  order  from  the  Duke  at  last  brought  his  archers  to  the 
front.  Their  arrow-flight  told  heavily  on  the  dense  masses 
crowded  around  the  King  and  as  the  sun  went  down  a 
shaft  pierced^Harold's  right  eye.  He  fell  between  the 
royal  ensigns,  and  the  battle  closed  with  a  desperate  melly 
over  his  corpse. 

Night  covered  the  flight  of  the  English  army;  but 
William  -was  quick  to  reap  the  advantage  of  his  victory. 
Securing  Romney  and  Dover,  he  marched  by  Canterbury 
upon  London.  Faction  and  intrigue  were  doing  his  work 
for  him  as  he  advanced  ;  for  Harold's  brothers  had  fallen 
with  the  King  on  the  field  of  Senlac,  and  there  was  none 
of  the  house  of  Godwine  to  contest  the  crown.  Of  the 
old  royal  line  there  remained  but  a  single  boy,  Eadgar 
the  ^Etheling.  He  was  chosen  King ;  but  the  choice 
gave  little  strength  to  the  national  cause.  The  widow 
of  the  Confessor  surrendered  Winchester  to  the  Duke. 
The  bishops  gathered  at  London  inclined  to  submission. 
The  citizens  themselves  faltered  as  William,  passing  by 
their  walls,  gave  Southwark  to  the  flames.  The  throne 
of  the  boy-king  really  rested  for  support  on  the  Earls  of 
Mercia  and  Northumbria,  Eadwine  and  Morkere ;  and 
William,  crossing  the  Thames  at  Wallingford  and  march- 
ing into  Hertfordshire,  threatened  to  cut  them  off  from 
their  earldoms.  The  masterly  movement  forced  the  Earls 
to  hurry  home,  and  London  gave  way  at  once.  Eadgar 
himself  was  at  the  head  of  the  deputation  who  came  to 
offer  the  crown  to  the  Norman  Duke.  "  They  bowed  to 
him,"  says  the  English  annalist,  pathetically,  "for  need." 
They  bowed  to  the  Norman  as  they  had  bowed  to  the 
Dane,  and  William  accepted  the  crown  in  the  spirit  of 
Cnut.  London  indeed  was  secured  by  the  erection  of  a 
fortress  which  afterwards  grew  into  the  Tower,  but  Wil- 
liam desired  to  reign  not  as  a  conqueror  but  as  a  lawful 
king.  At  Christmas  he  received  the  crown  at  Westmin- 
ster from  the  hands  of  Archbishop  Ealdred  amid  shouts 


110  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  "  Yea,  Yea,"  from  his  new  English  subjects.  Fines 
from  the  greater  landowners  atoned  for  a  resistance  which 
now  counted  as  rebellion ;  but  with  this  exception  every 
measure  of  the  new  sovereign  showed  his  desire  of  ruling 
as  a  successor  of  Eadvvard  or  Alfred.  As  yet  indeed  the 
greater  part  of  England  remained  quietly  aloof  from  him, 
and  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been  recognized  as  king 
by  Northumberland  or  the  greater  part  of  ^tercia.  But 
to  the  east  of  a  line  which  stretched  from  Norwich  to 
Dorsetshire  his  rule  was  unquestioned,  and  over  this  por- 
tion he  ruled  as  an  English  king.  His  soldiers  were  kept 
in  strict  order.  No  change  was  made  in  law  or  "custom. 
The  privileges  of  London  were  recognized  by  a  royal  writ 
which  still  remains,  the  most  venerable  of  its  muniments, 
among  the  city's  archives.  Peace  and  order  were  re- 
stored. William  even  attempted,  though  in  vain,  to  learn 
the  English  tongue  that  he  might  personally  administer 
justice  to  the  suitors  in  his  court.  The  kingdom  seemed 
so  tranquil  that  only  a  few  months  had  passed  after  the 
battle  of  Senlac  when  leaving  England  in  charge  of  his 
brother,  Odo  Bishop  of  Bayeux,  and  his  minister,  Wil- 
liam Fitz-Osbern,  the  King  returned  in  1067  for  a  while 
to  Normandy.  The  peace  he  left  was  soon  indeed  dis- 
turbed. Bishop  Odo's  tyranny  forced  the  Kentishmen  to 
seek  aid  from  Count  Eustace  of  Boulogne  ;  while  the 
Welsh  princes  supported  a  similar  rising  against  Norman 
oppression  in  the  west.  But  as  yet  the  bulk  of  the  land 
held  fairly  to  the  king.  Dover  was  saved  from  Eustace ; 
and  the  discontented  fled  over  sea  to  seek  refuge  inlands 
as  far  off  as  Constantinople,  where  Englishmen  from  this 
time  formed  great  part  of  the  body-guard  or  Varangians 
of  the  Eastern  Emperors.  William  returned  to  take  his 
place  again  as  an  English  King.  It  was  with  an  English 
force  that  he  subdued  a  rising  in  the  south-west  with  Ex- 
eter at  its  head,  and  it  was  at  the  head  of  an  English 
army  that  he  completed  his  work  by  marching  to  the 
North.  His  march  brought  Eadwine  and  Morkere  again 
to  submission ,  a  fresh  rising  ended  in  the  occupation  of 
York,  and  England  as  far  as  the  Tees  lay  quietly  at  Wil- 
liam's feet. 


EARLY   ENGLAND.      449—1071.  Ill 

It  was  in  fact  only  the  national  revolt  of  1068  that 
transformed  the  King  into  a  conqueror.  The  signal  for 
this  revolt  came  from  Swegen,  King  of  Denmark,  who 
had  for  two  years  past  been  preparing  to  dispute  Eng- 
land with  the  Norman,  but  on  the  appearance  of  his  fleet 
in  the  Humber  all  northern,  all  western  and  south-west- 
ern England  rose  as  one  man.  Eadgar  the  ^Etheling 
with  a  band  of  exiles  who  had  found  refuge  in  Scotland 
took  the  head  of  the  Northumbrian  revolt ;  in  the  south- 
west the  men  of  Devon,  Somerset,  and  Dorset  gathered 
to  the  sieges  of  Exeter  and  Montacute ;  while  a  new 
Norman  castle  at  Shrewsbury  alone  bridled  a  rising  in 
the  West._  So  ably  had  the  revolt  been  planned  that 
even  William  was  taken  by  surprise.  The  outbreak  was 
heralded  by  a  storm  of  York  and  the  slaughter  of  three 
thousand  Normans  who  formed  its  garrison.  The  news 
of  this  slaughter  reached  William  as  he  was  hunting  in 
the  forest  of  Dean  ;  and  in  a  wild  outburst  of  wrath  he 
swore  "by  the  splendor  of  God"  to  avenge  himself  on 
the  North.  But  wrath  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  cool- 
est statesmanship.  The  centre  of  resistance  lay  in  the 
Danish  fleet,  and  pushing  rapidly  to  the  Humber  with  a 
handful  of  horsemen  William  bought  at  a  heavy  price 
its  inactivity  and  withdrawal.  Then  turning  westward 
with  the  troops  that  gathered  round  him  he  swept  the 
Welsh  border  and  relieved  Shrewsbury  while  William 
Fitz-Osbern  broke  the  rising  around  Exeter.  His  success 
set  the  King  free  to  fulfil  his  oath  of  vengeance  on  the 
North.  After  a  long  delay  before  the  flooded  waters  of 
the  Aire  he  entered  York  and  ravaged  the  whole  country 
as  far  as  the  Tees.  Town  and  village  were  harried  and 
burned,  their  inhabitants  were  slain  or  driven  over  the 
Scottish  border.  The  coast  was  especially  wasted  that 
that  no  hold  might  remain  for  future  landings  of  the 
Danes.  Crops,  cattle,  the  very  implements  of  husbandry 
were  so  mercilessly  destroyed  that  a  famine  which  fol- 
lowed is  said  to  have  swept  offmore  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand victims.  Half  a  century  later  indeed  the  land  still  lay 
bare  of  culture  and  deserted  of  men  for  sixty  miles  north- 
ward of  York.  The  work  of  vengeance  once  over,  Wil- 


112  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Ham  led  his  army  back  from  the  Tees  to  York,  and  thence 
to  Chester  and  the  West.  Never  had  he  shown  the 
grandeur  of  his  character  so  memorably  as  in  this  terrible 
march.  The  winter  was  hard,  the  roads  choked  with 
snowdrifts  or  broken  by  torrents,  provisions  failed  ;  and 
his  army,  storm-beaten  and  forced  to  devour  its  horses 
for  food,  broke  out  into  mutiny  at  the  order  to  cross  the 
bleak  moorlands  that  part  Yorkshire  from  the  West. 
The  mercenaries  from  Anjou  and  Britanny  demanded 
their  release  from  service.  William  granted  their  prayer 
with  scorn.  On  foot,  at  the  head  of  the  troops  which 
still  clung  to  him,  he  forced  his  way  by  paths  inaccessi- 
ble to  horses,  often  helping  the  men  with  his  own  hands 
to  clear  the  road,  and  as  the  army  descended  upon  Ches- 
ter the  resistance  of  the  English  died  away. 

For  two  years  William  was  able  to  busy  himself  in  cas- 
tle building  and  in  measures  for  holding  down  the  con- 
quered land.  How  effective  these  were  was  seen  when 
the  last  act  of  the  conquest  was  reached.  All  hope  of 
Danish  aid  was  now  gone,  but  Englishmen  still  looked 
for  help  to  Scotland  where  Eadgar  the  ^Etheling  had 
again  found  refuge  and  where  his  sister  Margaret 
had  become  wife  of  King  Malcolm.  It  was  probably 
some  assurance  of  Malcolm's  aid  which  roused  the  Mer- 
cian Earls,  Eadwine  and  Morkere,  to  a  fresh  rising  in 
1071.  But  the  revolt  was  at  once  foiled  by  the  vigilance 
of  the  Conqueror.  Eadwine  fell  in  an  obscure  skirmish, 
while  Morkere  found  shelter  for  a  while  in  the  fen  coun- 
try where  a  desperate  band  of  patriots  gathered  round 
an  outlawed  leader,  Hereward.  Nowhere  had  William 
found  so  stubborn  a  resistance :  but  a  causeway  two 
miles  long  was  at  last  driven  across  the  marshes,  and  the 
last  hopes  of  English  freedom  died  in  the  surrender  of 
Ety.  It  was  as  the  unquestioned  master  of  England  that 
William  marched  to  the  North,  crossed  the  Lowlands 
and  the  Forth,  and  saw  Malcolm  appear  in  his  camp  upon 
the  Tay  to  swear  fealty  at  his  feet. 


BOOK  H. 

ENG-LAND  UNDER  FOREIGN  EIN&S. 
1071—1214. 


AUTHORITIES  FOR  BOOK  II. 
1071—1214. 

the  Norman  chroniclers  Orderic  becomes  from  this  point 
particularly  valuable  and  detailed.  The  Chronicle  and  Florence  of  Wor- 
cester remain  the  primary  English  authorities,  while  Simeon  of  Durham 
gives  much  special  information  on  northern  matters.  For  the  reign  of 
William  the  Red  the  chief  source  of  information  is  Eadmer,  a  monk  of 
Canterbury,  in  his  "  Historia  Novorum  "  and  "  Life  of  Anselm ."  Wil- 
liam of  Malmesbury  and  Henry  of  Huntingdon  are  both  contemporary 
authorities  during  that  of  Henry  the  First  ;  the  latter  remains  a  brief 
but  accurate  annalist  ;  the  former  is  the  leader  of  anew  historic  school, 
who  treat  English  events  as  parts  of  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
emulate  classic  models  by  a  more  philosophical  arrangement  of  their 
materials.  To  these  the  opening  of  Stephen's  reign  adds  the  "  Gesta 
Stephani,"  a  record  in  great  detail  by  one  of  the  King's  clerks,  and 
the  Hexham  Chroniclers. 

All  this  wealth  of  historical  material  however  suddenly  leaves  us  in 
the  chaos  of  civil  war.  Even  the  Chronicle  dies  out  in  the  midst  of 
Stephen's  reign,  and  the  close  at  the  same  time  of  the  works  we  have 
noted  leaves  a  blank  in  our  historical  literature  which  extends  over 
the  early  years  of  Henry  the  Second.  But  this  dearth  is  followed  by  a 
vast  outburst  of  historical  industry.  For  the  Beket  struggle  we  have 
the  mass  of  the  Archbishop's  own  correspondence  with  that  of  Foliot 
and  John  of  Salisbury.  From  1169  to  1192  our  primary  authority  is 
the  Chronicle  known  as  that  of  Benedict  of  Peterborough,  whose 
authorship  Professor  Stubbs  has  shown  to  be  more  probably  due  to  the 
royal  treasurer,  Bishop  Richard  Fitz-Neal.  This  is  continued  to  1201 
by  Roger  of  Howden  in  a  record  of  equally  official  value.  William  of 
Newborough's  history,  which  ends  in  1198,  is  a  work  of  the  classical 
school,  like  William  of  Malmesbury's.  It  is  distinguished  by  its  fair- 
ness and  good  sense.  To  these  may  be  added  the  Chronicle  of  Ralph 
Niger,  with  the  additions  of  Ralph  of  Coggeshall,  that  of  Gervais  of 
Canterbury,  and  the  interesting  life  of  St.  Hugh  of  Lincoln. 

But  the  intellectual  energy  of  Henry  the  Second's  time  is  shown 
even  more  remarkably  in  the  mass  of  general  literature  which  lies 
behind  these  distinctively  historical  sources,  in  the  treatises  of  John  of 
Salisbury,  the  voluminous  works  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  the  "  Trifles  " 
and  satires  of  Walter  Map,  Glanvill's  treatise  on  Law,  Richard  Fitz- 
Neal's  "  Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer,"  to  which  we  owe  our  knowledge 
of  Henry's  financial  system,  the  romances  of  Gaimar  and  of  Wace,  the 
poem  of  the  San  Graal.  But  this  intellectual  fertility  is  far  from  ceas- 

(115) 


116  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Ing  with  Henry  the  Second.  The  thirteenth  century  has  hardly  begun 
when  the  romantic  impulse  quickens  even  the  old  English  tongue  in 
the  long  poem  of  Layamon.  The  Chronicle  of  Richard  of  Devizes  and 
»n  "  Itinerarium  Regis  "  supplement  Roger  of  Howden  for  Richard's 
reign.  With  John  we  enter  upon  the  Annals  of  Barn  well  and  are  aided 
by  the  invaluable  series  of  the  Chroniclers  of  St.  Albans.  Among  the 
side  topics  of  the  time,  we  may  find  much  information  as  to  the  Jews 
in  Toovey's  "  Anglia  Judaica  ;"  the  Chronicle  of  Jocelyn  of  Brakelond 
gives  us  a  peep  into  social  and  monastic  life  ;  the  Cistercian  revival 
may  be  traced  in  the  records  of  the  Cistercian  abbeys  in  Dugdale's 
Monasticon  ;  the  Charter  Rolls  give  some  information  as  to  municipal 
history  ;  and  constitutional  development  may  be  traced  in  the  docu- 
ments collected  by  Professor  Stubbs  in  his  "Select  Charters." 


CHAPTER  T. 

THE    CONQUEROR. 
1071-1085. 

IN  the  five  hundred  years  that  followed  the  landing  of 
Hengest  Britain  had  become  England,  and  its  conquest 
had  ended  in  the  settlement  of  its  conquerors,  in  their 
conversion  to  Christianity,  in  the  birth  of  a  national 
literature,  ol  an  imperfect  civilization,  of  a  rough  political 
order.  But  through  the  whole  of  this  earlier  age  every 
attempt  to  fuse  the  various  tribes  of  conquerors  into  a 
single  nation  had  failed.  The  effort  of  Northumbria  to 
extend  her  rule  over  all  England  had  been  foiled  by  the 
resistance  of  Mercia  ;  that  of  Mercia  by  the  resistance  of 
Wessex.  Wessex  herself,  even  under  the  guidance  of 
great  kings  and  statesmen,  had  no  sooner  reduced  the 
country  to  a  seeming  unity  than  local  independence  rose 
again  at  the  call  of  the  Northmen.  The  sense  of  a  single 
England  deepened  with  the  pressure  of  the  invaders ; 
the  monarchy  of  jElfred  and  his  house  broadened  into  an 
English  kingdom  ;  but  still  tribal  jealousies  battled  with 
national  unity.  Northumbrian  lay  apart  from  West- 
Saxon,  Northman  from  Englishman.  A  common  national 
sympathy  held  the  country  roughly  together,  but  a  real 
national  union  had  yet  to  come.  It  came  with  foreign 
rule.  The  rule  of  the  Danish  kings  broke  local  jeal- 
ousies as  they  had  never  been  broken  before,  and  be- 
queathed a  new  England  to  Godwine  and  the  confessor. 
But  Cnut  was  more  Englishman  than  Northman,  and  his 
system  of  government  was  an  English  system.  The  true 
foreign  yoke  was  only  felt  when  England  saw  its  con- 
queror in  William  the  Norman. 

'(in) 


118  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

For  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  from  the  hour  when 
William  turned  triumphant  from  the  fens  of  Ely  to  the 
hour  when  John  fled  defeated  from  Norman  shores,  our 
story  is  one  of  foreign  masters.  Kings  from  Normandy 
were  followed  by  kings  from  Anjou.  But  whether  under 
Norman  or  Angevin  Englishmen  were  a  subject  race,  con- 
quered and  ruled  by  men  of  strange  blood  and  of  strange 
speech.  And  yet  it  was  in  these  years  of  subjection  that 
England  first  became  really  England.  Provincial  differ- 
ences were  finally  crushed  into  national  unity  by  the 
pressure  of  the  stranger.  The  firm  government  of  her 
foreign  kings  secured  the  land  a  long  and  almost  un- 
broken peace  in  which  the  new  nation  grew  to  a  sense 
of  its  oneness,  and  this  consciousness  was  strengthened 
by  the  political  ability  which  in  Henry  the  First  gave  it 
administrative  order  and  in  Henry  the  Second  built  up 
the  fabric  of  its  law.  New  element's  of  social  life  were 
developed  alike  by  the  suffering  and  the  prosperity  of 
the  times.  The  wrong  which  had  been  done  by  the  deg- 
radation of  the  free  landowner  into  a  feudal  dependant 
was  partially  redressed  by  the  degradation  of  the  bulk  of 
the  English  lords  themselves  into  a  middle  class  as  they 
were  pushed  from  their  place  by  the  foreign  baronage 
who  settled  on  English  soil ;  and  this  social  change  was 
accompanied  by  a  gradual  enriqhment  and  elevation  of 
the  class  of  servile  and  semi-servile  cultivators  which  had 
lifted  them  at  the  close  of  this  period  into  almost  com- 
plete freedom.  The  middle-class  which  was  thus  created 
was  reinforced  by  the  upgrowth  of  a  corresponding  class 
in  our  towns.  Commerce  and  trade  were  promoted  by 
the  justice  and  policy  of  the  foreign  kings ;  and  with 
their  advance  rose  the  political  importance  of  the  trader. 
The  boroughs  of  England,  which  at  the  opening  of  this 
period  were  for  the  most  part  mere  villages,  were  rich 
enough  at  its  close  to  buy  liberty  from  the  Crown  and  to 
stand  ready  for  the  mightier  part  they  were  to  play  in 
the  development  of  our  parliament.  The  shame  of  con- 
quest, the  oppression  of  the  conquerors,  begot  a  moral 
and  religious  revival  which  raised  religion  into  a  living 
thing;  while  the  close  connection  with  the  Continent 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.   119 

which  foreign  conquest  brought  about  secured  for  Eng- 
land a  new  communion  with  the  artistic  and  intellectual 
life  of  the  world  without  her. 

In  a  word,  it  is  to  the  stern  discipline  of  our  foreign 
kings  that  we  owe  not  merely  English  wealth  and  Eng- 
lish freedom  but  England  herself.  And  of  these  foreign 
masters  the  greatest  was  William  of  Normandy.  In 
William  the  wild  impulses  of  the  Northman's  blood 
mingled  strangely  with  the  cool  temper  of  the  modern 
statesman.  As  he  was  the  last,  so  he  wast  the  most  ter- 
rible outcome  of  the  northern  race.  The  very  spirit  of 
the  sea-robbers  from  whom  he  sprang  seemed  embodied 
in  his  gigantic  form,  his  enormous  strength,  his  savage 
countenance,  his  desperate  bravery,  the  fury  of  his 
wrath,  the  ruthlessness  of  his  revenge.  "  No  knight  un- 
der Heaven,"  his  enemies  owned,  "  was  William's  peer." 
Boy  as  he  was  at  Val-es-dunes,  horse  and  man  went  down 
before  his  lance.  All  the  fierce  gayety  of  his  nature 
broke  out  in  the  warfare  of  his  youth,  in  his  rout  of  fif- 
teen Angevins  with  but  five  men  at  his  back,  in  his 
defiant  ride  over  the  ground  which  Geoffry  Martel 
claimed  from  him,  a  ride  with  hawk  on  fist  as  if  war  and 
the  chase  were  one.  No  man  could  bend  William's  bow. 
His  mace  crashed  its  way  through  a  ring  of  English  war- 
riors to  the  foot  of  the  Standard.  He  rose  to  his  greatest 
height  at  moments  when  other  men  despaired.  His 
voice  rang  out  as  a  trumpet  when  his  soldiers  fled  before 
the  English  charge  at  Senlac,  and  his  rally  turned  the 
flight  into  a  means  of  victory.  In  his  winter  march  on 
Chester  he  strode  afoot  at  the  head  of  his  fainting  troops 
and  helped  with  his  own  hand  to  clear  a  road  through 
the  snowdrifts.  And  with  the  Northman's  daring  broke 
out  the  Northman's  pitilessness.  When  the  townsmen 
of  Alen9on  hung  raw  hides  along  their  walls  in  scorn  of 
the  "  tanner's  "  grandson,  William  tore  out  his  prisoners' 
eyes,  hewed  off  their  hands  and  feet,  and  flung  them  into 
the  town.  Hundreds  of  Hampshire  men  were  driven 
from  their  homes  to  make  him  a  hunting-ground  and  his 
harrying  of  Northumbria  left  Northern  England  a  des- 
olate waste.  Of  men's  love  or  hate  he  recked  little. 


120  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

His  grim  look,  his  pride,  his  silence,  his  wild  outbursts 
of  passion,  left  William  lonely  even  in  his  court.  His 
subjects  trembled  as  he  passed.  '*  Stark  man  he  was," 
writes  the  English  chronicler,  "  and  great  awe  men  had 
of  him."  His  very  wrath  was  solitary.  "  To  no  man 
spake  he  and  no  man  dared  speak  to  him,"  when  the 
news  reached  him  of  Harold's  seizure  of  the  throne.  It 
was  only  when  he  passed  from  his  palace  to  the  loneliness 
of  the  woods  that  the  King's  temper  unbent.  "He  loved 
the  wild  deer  as  though  he  had  been  their  father." 

It  was  the  genius  of  William  which  lifted  him  out  of 
this  mere  Northman  into  a  great  general  and  a  great 
statesman.  The  wary  strategy  of  his  French  campaigns, 
the  organization  of  his  attack  upon  England,  the  victory 
at  Senlac,  the  quick  resource,  the  steady  perseverance 
which  achieved  the  Conquest  showed  the  wide  range  of 
his  generalship.  His  political  ability  had  shown  itself 
from  the  first  moment  of  his  accession  to  the  ducal 
throne.  William  had  the  instinct  of  government.  He 
had  hardly  reached  manhood  when  Normandy  lay  peace- 
ful at  his  feet.  Revolt  was  crushed.  Disorder  was 
trampled  under  foot.  The  Duke  "  could  never  love  a 
robber,"  be  he  baron  or  knave.  The  sternness  of  his 
temper  stamped  itself  throughout  upon  his  rule.  "  Stark 
he  was  to  men  that  withstood  him,"  says  the  Chronicler 
of  his  English  system  of  government ;  "  so  harsh  and 
cruel  was  he  that  none  dared  withstand  his  will.  Earls 
that  did  aught  against  his  bidding  he  cast  into  bonds  , 
bishops  he  stripped  of  their  bishoprics,  abbots  of  their 
abbacies.  He  spared  not  his  own  brother  :  first  he  was 
in  the  land,  but  the  King  cast  him  into  bondage.  If  a 
man  would  live  and  hold  his  lands,  need  it  were  he  fol- 
lowed the  King's  will."  Stern  as  such  a  rule  was,  its 
sternness  gave  rest  to  the  land.  Even  amidst  the  suffer- 
ings which  necessarily  sprang  from  the  circumstances  of 
the  Conquest  itself,  from  the  erection  of  castles  or  the 
enclosure  of  forests  or  the  exactions  which  built  up 
William's  hoard  at  Winchester,  Englishmen  were  unable 
to  forget  "  the  good  peace  he  made  in  the  land,  so  that  a 
man  might  fare  over  his  realm  with  a  bosom  full  of  gold." 


ENGLAND   UNDEE   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    121 

Strange  touches  too  of  a  humanity  far  in  advance  of  his 
age  contrasted  with  this  general  temper  of  the  Con- 
queror's government.  One  of  the  strongest  traits  in  his 
character  was  an  aversion  to  shed  blood  by  process  of 
law ,  he  formally  abolished  the  punishment  of  death,  and 
only  a  single  execution  stains  the  annals  of  his  reign. 
An  edict  yet  more  honorable  to  his  humanity  put  an  end 
to  the  slave-trade  which  had  till  then  been  carried  on  at 
the  port  of  Bristol.  The  contrast  between  the  ruthless- 
ness  and  pitifulness  of  his  public  acts  sprang  indeed  from 
a  contrast  within  his  temper  itself.  The  pitiless  warrior, 
the  stern  and  awful  king  was  a  tender  and  faithful  hus- 
band, an  affectionate  father.  The  lonely  silence  of  his 
bearing  broke  into  gracious  converse  with  pure  and 
sacred  souls  like  Anselm.  If  William  was  "  stark  "  to 
rebel  and  baron,  men  noted  that  he  was  "  mild  to  those 
that  loved  God." 

But  the  greatness  of  the  Conqueror  was  seen  in  more 
than  the  order  and  peace  which  he  imposed  upon  the 
land.  Fortune  had  given  him  one  of  the  greatest  oppor- 
tunities over  offered  to  a  king  of  stamping  his  own  genius 
on  the  destinies  of  a  people ;  and  it  is  the  way  in  which 
he  seized  on  this  opportunity  which  has  set  William 
among  the  foremost  statesmen  of  the  world.  The  struggle 
which  ended  in  the  fens  of  Ely  had  wholly  changed  his 
position.  He  no  longer  held  the  land  merely  as  its 
national  and  elected  King.  To  his  elective  right  he 
added  the  right  of  conquest.  It  is  the  way  in  whk)h 
William  grasped  and  employed  this  double  power  that 
marks  the  originality  of  his  political  genius,  for  the 
system  of  government  which  he  devised  was  in  fact  the 
result  of  this  double  origin  of  his  rule.  It  represented 
neither  the  purely  feudal  system  of  the  Continent  nor 
the  system  of  the  older  English  royalty  :  more  truly  per- 
haps it  may  be  said  to  have  represented  both.  As  the 
conqueror  of  England  William  developed  the  military 
organization  of  feudalism  so  far  as  was  necessary  for  the 
secure  possession  of  his  conquests.  The  ground  was 
already  prepared  for  such  an  organization.  We  have 
watched  the  beginnings  of  English  feudalism  in  the 


122  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

warriors,  the  "companions"  or  "  thegiis "  who  were 
personally  attached  to  the  king's  war-band  and  received 
estates  from  the  folkland  in  reward  for  their  personal 
services.  In  later  times  this  feudal  distribution  of 
estates  had  greatly  increased  as  the  bulk  of  the  nobles 
followed  the  king's  example  and  bound  their  tenants  to 
themselves  by  a  similar  process  of  subinfeudation.  The 
pure  freeholders  on  the  other  hand,  the  class  which 
formed  the  basis  of  the  original  English  society,  had  been 
gradually  reduced  in  number,  partly  through  imitation 
of  the  class  above  them,  but  more  through  the  pressure 
of  the  Danish  wars  and  the  social  disturbance  consequent 
upon  them  which  forced  these  freemen  to  seek  protectors 
among  the  thegns  at  the  cost  of  their  independence. 
Even  before  the  reign  of  William  therefore  feudalism 
was  surperseding  the  older  freedom  in  England  as  it  had 
already  superseded  it  in  Germany  or  France.  But  the 
tendency  was  quickened  and  intensified  by  the  Conquest. 
The  desperate  and  universal  resistance  of  the  country 
forced  William  to  hold  by  the  swo^-d  what  the  sword  had 
won  ;  and  an  army  strong  enough  to  crush  at  any  moment 
a  national  revolt  was  needful  for  the  preservation  of  his 
throne.  Such  an  army  could  only  be  maintained  by  a 
vast  confiscation  of  the  soil,  and  the  failure  of  the  English 
risings  cleared  the  ground  for  its  establishment.  The 
greater  part  of  the  higher  nobility  fell  in  battle  or  fled 
into  exile,  while  the  lower  thegnhood  either  forfeited 
the  whole  of  their  lands  or  redeemed  a  portion  by  the 
surrender  of  the  rest.  We  see  the  completeness  of  the 
confiscation  in  the  vast  estates  which  William  was 
enabled  to  grant  to  his  more  powerful  followers.  Two 
hundred  manors  in  Kent  with  more  than  an  equal 
number  elsewhere  rewarded  the  services  of  his  brother 
Odo,  and  grants  almost  as  large  fell  to  William's  coun- 
sellors Fitz-Osbern  and  Montgomery  or  to  barons  like 
the  Mowbrays  and  the  Clares.  But  the  poorest  soldier 
of  fortune  found  his  part  in  the  spoil.  The  meanest 
Norman  rose  to  wealth  and  power  in  this  new  dominion 
of  his  lord.  Great  or  small,  each  manor  thus  granted 
was  granted  on  condition  of  its  holder's  service  at  the 


ENGLAND   UNDER    FOREIGN  KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    123 

King's  call ;  a  whole  army  was  by  this  means  encamped 
upon  the  soil ;  and  William's  summons  could  at  any  hour 
gather  an  overwhelming  force  around  his  standard. 

Such  a  force  however,  effective  as  it  was  against  the 
conquered  English,  was  hardly  less  formidable  to  the 
Crown  itself.  When  once  it  was  established,  William 
found  himself  fronted  in  his  new  realm  by  a  feudal  baron- 
age, by  the  men  whom  he  had  so  hardly  bent  to  his  will 
in  Normandy,  and  who  were  as  impatient  of  law,  as 
jealous  of  the  royal  power,  as  eager  for  an  unbridled 
military  and  judicial  independence  within  their  own 
manors,  here  as  there.  The  political  genius  of  the  Con- 
queror was  shown  in  his  appreciation  of  this  danger  and  in 
the  skill  with  which  he  met  it.  Large  as  the  estates  he 
granted  were,  they  were  scattered  over  the  country  in 
such  a  way  as  to  render  union  between  the  great  land- 
owners or  the  hereditary  attachment  of  great  areas  of 
population  to  any  one  separate  lord  equally  impossible. 
A  yet  wiser  measure  struck  at  the  very  root  of  feudalism. 
When  the  larger  holdings  were  divided  by  their  owners 
into  smaller  subtenancies,  the  under-tenants  were  bound 
by  the  same  conditions  of  service  to  their  lord  as  he  to 
the  Crown.  "  Hear,  my  lord,"  swore  the  vassal  as  kneel- 
ing bareheaded  and  without  arms  he  placed  his  hands 
within  those  of  his  superior,  "  I  become  liege  man  of  3Tours 
for  life  and  limb  and  earthly  regard ;  and  I  will  keep 
faith  and  loyalty  to  you  for  life  and  death,  God  help 
me  !  "  Then  the  kiss  of  his  lord  invested  him  with  land 
as  a  "fief"  to  descend  to  him  and  his  heirs  forever.  In 
other  countries  such  a  vassal  owed  fealty  to  his  lord 
against  all  foes,  be  they  king  or  no.  By  the  usage  how- 
ever which  William  enacted  in  England  each  sub-tenant, 
in  addition  to  his  oath  of  fealty  to  his  lord,  swore  fealty 
directly  to  the  Crown,  and  loyalty  to  the  King  was  thus 
established  as  the  supreme  and  universal  duty  of  all 
Englishmen. 

But  the  Conqueror's  skill  was  shown  not  so  much  in 
these  inner  checks  upon  feudalism  as  in  the  counter- 
balancing forces  which  he  provided  without  it.  He  was 
not  only  the  head  of  the  great  garrison  that  held  England 


124  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

down,  he  was  legal  and  elected  King  of  the  English 
people.  If  as  Conqueror  he  covered  the  country  with  a 
new  military  organization,  as  the  successor  of  Eadward 
he  maintained  the  judicial  and  administrative  organization 
of  the  old  English  realm.  At  the  danger  of  a  severance 
of  the  land  between  the  greater  nobles  he  struck  a  final 
blow  by  the  abolition  of  the  four  great  earldoms.  The 
shire  became  the  largest  unit  of  local  government,  and  in 
each  shire  the  royal  nomination  of  sheriffs  for  its  adminis- 
tration concentrated  the  whole  executive  power  in  the 
King's  hands.  The  old  legal  constitution  of  the  country 
gave  him  the  whole  judicial  power,  and  William  was 
jealous  to  retain  and  heighten  this.  While  he  preserved 
the  local  courts  of  the  hundred  and  the  shire  he  strength- 
ened the  jurisdiction  of  the  King's  Court,  which  seems 
even  in  the  Confessor's  day  to  have  become  more  and 
more  a  court  of  highest  appeal  with  a  right  to  call  up  all 
cases  from  any  lower  jurisdiction  to  its  bar.  The  control 
over  the  national  revenue  which  had  rested  even  in  the 
most  troubled  times  in  the  hands  of  the  King  was  turned 
into  a  great  financial  power  by  the  Conqueror's  system. 
Over  the  whole  face  of  the  land  a  large  part  of  the 
manors  were  burdened  with  special  dues  to  the  Crown  : 
and  it  was  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  and  recording 
these  that  William  sent  into  each  country  the  commission- 
ers whose  enquiries  are  recorded  in  his  Domesday  Book. 
A  jury  empannelled  in  each  hundred  declared  on  oath 
the  extent  and  nature  of  each  estate,  the  names,  number, 
and  condition  of  its  inhabitants,  its  value  before  and  after 
the  Conquest,  and  sums  due  from  it  to  the  Crown. 
These,  with  the  Danegeld  or  land-tax  levied  since  the 
days  of  JEthelred,  formed  as  yet  the  main  financial 
resources  of  the  Crown,  and  their  exaction  carried  the 
royal  authority  in  its  most  direct  form  home  to  every 
landowner.  But  to  these  were  added  a  revenue  drawn 
from  the  old  Crown  domain,  now  largely  increased  by  the 
confiscations  of  the  Conquest,  the  ever"  growing  income 
from  the  judicial  "  fines  "  imposed  by  the  King's  judges 
in  the  King's  courts,  and  the  fees  and  redemptions  paid 
to  the  Crown  on  the  grant  or  renewal  of  every  privilege 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    125 

or  charter.  A  new  source  of  revenue  was  found  in  the 
Jewish  traders,  many  of  whom  followed  William  from 
Normandy,  and  who  were  glad  to  pay  freely  for  the  royal 
protection  which  enabled  them  to  settle  in  their  quarters 
or  "  Jewries  "  in  all  the  principal  towns  of  England. 

William  found  a  yet  stronger  check  on  his  baronage  in 
the  organization  of  the  Church.  Its  old  dependence  on 
the  royal  power  was  strictly  enforced.  Prelates  were 
practically  chosen  by  the  King.  Homage  was  exacted 
from  bishop  as  from  baron.  No  royal  tenant  could  be  ex- 
communicated save  by  the  King's  leave.  No  synod  could 
legislate  without  his  previous  assent  and  subsequent  con- 
firmation of  its  decrees.  No  papal  letters  could  be  re- 
ceived within  the  realm  save  by  his  permission.  The 
King  firmly  repudiated  the  claims  which  were  beginning 
to  be  put  forward  by  the  court  of  Rome.  When  Gregory 
VII.  called  on  him  to  do  fealty  for  his  kingdom  the  King 
sternly  refused  to  admit  the  claim.  "Fealty  I  have 
never  willed  to  do,  nor  will  I  do  it  now.  I  have  never 
promised  it,  nor  do  I  find  that  my  predecessors  did  it  to 
yours."  William's  reforms  only  tended  to  tighten  this 
hold  of  the  Crown  on  the  clergy.  Stigand  was  deposed ; 
and  the  elevation  of  Lanfranc  to  the  see  of  Canterbury 
was  followed  by  the  removal  of  most  of  the  English  pre- 
lates and  by  the  appointment  of  Norman  ecclesiastics  in 
their  place.  The  new  archbishop  did  much  to  restore 
discipline,  and  William's  own  efforts  were  no  doubt  partly 
directed  by  a  real  desire  for  the  religious  improvement 
of  his  realm.  But  the  foreign  origin  of  the  new  pre- 
lates cut  them  off  from  the  flocks  they  ruled  and  bound 
them  firmly  to  the  foreign  throne  ;  while  their  indepen- 
dent position  was  lessened  by  a  change  which  seemed  in- 
tended to  preserve  it.  Ecclesiastical  cases  had  till  now 
been  decided,  like  civil  cases,  in  shire  or  hundred-court, 
where  the  bishop  sate  side  by  side  with  ealdorman  or 
sheriff.  They  were  now  withdrawn  from  it  to  the  sepa- 
rate court  of  the  bishop.  The  change  was  pregnant  with 
future  trouble  to  the  Crown  ;  but  for  the  moment  it  told 
mainly  in  removing  the  bishop  from  his  traditional  contact 
with  the  popular  assembly  and  in  effacing  the  memory 


126  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  the  original  equality  of  the  religious  with  the  civil 
power. 

In  any  struggle  with  feudalism  a  national  king,  secure 
of  the  support  of  the  Church,  and  backed  by  the  royal 
hoard  at  Winchester,  stood  in  different  case  from  the 
merely  feudal  sovereigns  of  the  Continent.  The  differ- 
ence of  power  was  seen  as  soon  as  the  Conquest  was  fairly 
over  and  the  struggle  which  William  had  anticipated 
opened  between  the  baronage  and  the  Crown.  The  wis- 
dom of  his  policy  in  the  destruction  of  the  great  earldoms 
which  had  overshadowed  the  throne  was  shown  in  an  at- 
tempt at  their  restoration  made  in  1075  by  Roger,  the 
son  of  his  minister  William  Fitz-Osbern,  and  by  the  Bre- 
ton, Ralf  de  Guader,  whom  the  King  had  rewarded  for 
his  services  at  Senlac  with  the  earldom  of  Norfolk.  The 
rising  was  quickly  suppressed,  Roger  thrown  into  prison, 
and  Ralf  driven  over  sea.  The  intrigues  of  the  baronage 
soon  found  another  leader  in  William's  half-brother,  the 
Bishop  of  Bayeux.  Under  pretence  of  aspiring  by  arms 
to  the  papacy  Bishop  Odo  collected  money  and  men,  but 
the  treasure  was  at  once  seized  by  the  royal  officers  and 
the  Bishop  arrested  in  the  midst  of  the  court.  Even  at 
the  King's  bidding  no  officer  would  venture  to  seize  on  a 
prelate  of  the  Church ,  and  it  was  with  his  own  hands 
that  William  was  forced  to  effect  his  arrest.  The  Con- 
queror was  as  successful  against  foes  from  without  as 
against  foes  from  within.  The  fear  of  the  Danes,  which 
had  so  long  hung  like  a  thunder-cloud  over  England, 
passed  away  before  the  host  which  William  gathered  in 
1085  to  meet  a  great  armament  assembled  by  King  Cnut. 
A  mutiny  dispersed  the  Danish  fleet,  and  the  murder  of 
its  King  removed  all  peril  from  the  North.  Scotland, 
already  humbled  by  William's  invasion,  was  bridled  by 
the  erection  of  a  strong  fortress  at  Newcastle-upon-Tyne  , 
and  after  penetrating  with  his  army  to  the  heart  of  Wales 
the  King  commenced  its  systematic  reduction  by  settling 
three  of  its  great  barons  along  its  frontier.  It  was  not 
till  his  closing  years  that  William's  unvarying  success  was 
troubled  by  a  fresh  outbreak  of  the  Norman  baronage 
under  his  son  Robert  and  by  an  attack  which  he  was 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    127 

forced  to  meet  in  1087  from  France.  Its  King  mocked 
at  the  Conqueror's  unwieldy  bulk  and  at  the  sickness 
which  bound  him  to  his  bed  at  Rouen.  "  King  William 
has  as  long  a  lying-in,"  laughed  Philip,  "  as  a  woman 
behind  her  curtains."  "  When  I  get  up,"  William  swore 
grimly,  "  I  will  go  to  mass  in  Philip's-land  and  bring  a 
rich  offering  for  my  churching.  I  will  offer  a  thousand 
candles  for  my  fee.  Flaming  brands  shall  they  be,  and 
steel  shall  glitter  over  the  fire  they  make."  At  harvest- 
tide  town  and  hamle-t  flaring  into  ashes  along  the  French 
border  fulfilled  the  ruthless  vow.  But  as  the  King  rode 
down  the  steep  street  of  Mantes  which  he  had  given  to 
the  flames  his  horse  stumbled  among  the  embers,  and 
William  was  flung  heavily  against  his  saddle.  He  was 
borne  home  to  Rouen  to  die.  The  sound  of  the  minster 
bell  woke  him  at  dawn  as  he  lay  in  the  convent  of  St. 
Gervais,  overlooking  the  city — it  was  the  hour  of  prime 
— and  stretching  out  his  hands  in  prayer  the  King  passed 
quietly  away.  Death  itself  took  its  color  from  the  sav- 
age solitude  of  his  life.  Priests  and  nobles  fled  as  the 
last  breath  left  him,  and  the  Conqueror's  body  lay  naked 
and  lonely  on  the  floor. 


CHAPTER  H. 

THE     NORMAN     KINGS. 
1085—1154. 

WITH  the  death  of  the  Conqueror  passed  the  terror 
which  had  held  the  barons  in  awe,  while  the  severance  of 
his  dominions  roused  their  hopes  of  successful  resistance 
to  the  stern  rule  beneath  which  they  had  bowed.  Wil- 
liam bequeathed  Normandy  to  his  eldest  son  Robert ;  but 
William  the  Red,  his  second  son,  hastened  with  his 
father's  ring  to  England  where  the  influence  of  Lanfranc 
secured  him  the  crown.  The  baronage  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity to  rise  in  arms  under  pretext  of  supporting  the 
claims  of  Robert,  whose  weakness  of  character  gave  full 
scope  for  the  growth  of  feudal  independence  ;  and  Bishop 
Odo,  now  freed  from  prison,  placed  himself  at  the  head 
of  the  revolt.  The  new  King  was  thrown  almost  wholly 
on  the  loyalty  of  his  English  subjects.  But  the  national 
stamp  which  William  had  given  to  his  kingship  told  at 
once.  The  English  rallied  to  the  royal  standard  ; 
Bishop  Wulfstan  of  Worcester,  the  one  surviving  Bishop 
of  English  blood,  defeated  the  insurgents  in  the  West; 
while  the  King,  summoning  the  freemen  of  country  and 
town  to  his  host  under  pain  of  being  branded  as  "nith- 
ing  "  or  worthless*  advanced  with  a  large  force  against 
Rochester  where  the  barons  were  concentrated.  A 
plague  which  broke  out  among  the  garrison  forced  them 
to  capitulate,  and  as  the  prisoners  passed  through  the 
royal  army  cries  of  "  gallows  and  cord  "  burst  from  the 
English  ranks.  The  failure  of  a  later  conspiracy  whose 
aim  was  to  set  on  the  throne  a  kinsman  of  the  royal 
house,  Stephen  of  Albemarle,  with  the  capture  and  im- 

(128) 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    129 

prisonment  of  its  head,  Robert  Mowbray,  the  Earl  of 
Northumberland,  brought  home  at  last  to  the  baronage 
their  helplessness  in  a  strife  with  the  King.  The  genius 
of  the  Conqueror  had  saved  England  from  the  danger  of 
feudalism.  But  he  had  left  as  weighty  a  danger  in  the 
power  which  trod  feudalism  under  foot.  The  power  of 
the  Crown  was  a  purely  personal  power,  restrained  under 
the  Conqueror  by  his  own  high  sense  of  duty,  but  ca- 
pable of  becoming  a  pure  despotism  in  the  hands  of  his 
son.  The  nobles  were  at  his  feet,  and  the  policy  of  his 
minister,  Bishop  Flambard  of  Durham,  loaded  their  es- 
tates with  feudal  obligations.  Each  tenant  was  held  as 
bound  to  appear  if  needful  thrice  a  year  at  the  royal 
court,  to  pay  a  heavy  fine  or  rent  on  succession  to  his 
estate,  to  contribute  aid  in  case  of  the  King's  capture  in 
war  or  the  knighthood  of  the  King's  eldest  son  or  the 
marriage  of  his  eldest  daughter.  An  heir  who  was  still 
a  minor  passed  into  the  King's  wardship,  and  all  profit 
from  his  lands  went  during  the  period  of  wardship 
to  the  King.  If  the  estate  fell  to  an  heiress,  her  hand 
was  at  the  King's  disposal  and  was  generally  sold  by 
him  to  the  highest  bidder.  These  rights  of  "  marriage  " 
and  "  wardship  "  as  well  as  the  exaction  of  aids  at  the 
royal  will  poured  wealth  into  the  treasury  while  they 
impoverished  and  fettered  the  baronage.  A  fresh  source 
of  revenue  was  found  in  the  Church.  The  same  prin- 
ciples of  feudal  dependence  were  applied  to  its  lands  as 
to  those  of  the  nobles  ;  and  during  the  vacancy  of  a  see 
or  abbey  its  profits,  like  those  of  a  minor,  were  swept 
into  the  royal  hoard.  William's  profligacy  and  extrava- 
gance soon  tempted  him  to  abuse  this  resource,  and  so 
steadily  did  he  refuse  to  appoint  successors  to  prelates 
whom  death  removed  that  at  the  close  of  his  reign  one 
archbishopric,  four  bishoprics,  and  eleven  abbeys  were 
found  to  be  without  pastors. 

Vile  as  was  this  system  of  extortion  and  misrule  but  a 
single  voice  was  raised  in  protest  against  it.  Lanfranc 
had  been  followed  in  his  abbey  at  Bee  by  the  most  fa- 
mous of  his  scholars,  Anselm  of  Aosta,  an  Italian  like 
himself.  Friends  as  they  were,  no  two  men  could  be 


130  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

more  strangely  unlike.  Anselm  had  grown  to  manhood 
in  the  quiet  solitude  of  his  mountain-valley,  a  tender- 
hearted poet-dreamer,  with  a  soul  pure  as  the  Alpine 
snows  above  him,  and  an  intelligence  keen  and  clear  as 
the  mountain-air.  The  whole  temper  of  the  man  was 
painted  in  a  dream  of  his  youth.  It  seemed  to  him  as 
though  heaven  lay,  a  stately  palace,  amid  the  gleaming 
hill-peaks,  while  the  women  reaping  in  the  corn-fields  of 
the  valley  became  harvest-maidens  of  its  King.  They 
reaped  idly,  and  Anselm,  grieved  at  their  sloth,  hastily 
climbed  the  mountain  side  to  accuse  them  to  their  lord. 
As  he  reached  the  palace  the  King's  voice  called  him  to 
his  feet  and  he  poured  forth  his  tale  ;  then  at  the  royal 
bidding  bread  of  an  unearthly  whiteness  was  set  before 
him,  and  he  ate  and  was  refreshed.  The  dream  passed 
with  the  morning  ;  but  the  sense  of  heaven's  nearness  to 
earth,  the  fervid  loyalty  to  the  service  of  his  Lord,  the 
tender  restfulness  and  peace  in  the  Divine  presence 
which  it  reflected  live  on  in  the  life  of  Anselm.  Wan- 
dering like  other  Italian  scholars  to  Normandy,  he  became 
a  monk  under  Lanfranc,  and  on  his  teacher's  removal  to 
higher  duties  succeeded  him  in  the  direction  of  the  Ab- 
bey of  Bee.  No  teacher  has  ever  thrown  a  greater  spirit 
of  love  into  his  toil.  "  Force  your  scholars  to  improve  !  " 
he  burst  out  to  another  teacher  who  relied  on  blows  and 
compulsion.  "  Did  you  ever  see  a  craftsman  fashion  a 
fair  image  out  of  a  golden  plate  by  blows  alone  ?  Does 
he  not  now  gently  press  it  and  strike  it  with  his  tools, 
now  with  wise  art  yet  more  gently  raise  and  shape 
it?  What  do  your  scholars  turn  into  under  this  cease- 
less beating  ?  "  "  They  turn  only  brutal,"  was  the  re- 
ply. "  You  have  bad  luck,"  was  the  keen  answer,  "  in  a 
training  that  only  turns  men  into  beasts."  The  worst 
natures  softened  before  this  tenderness  and  patience. 
Even  the  Conqueror,  so  harsh  and  terrible  to  others,  be- 
came another  man,  gracious  and  easy  of  speech,  with 
Anselm.  But  amidst  his  absorbing  cares  as  a  teacher, 
the  Prior  of  Bee  found  time  for  philosophical  specula- 
tions to  which  we  owe  the  scientific  inquiries  which  built 
up  the  theology  of  the  middle  ages.  His  famous  works 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    131 

were  the  first  attempts  of  any  Christian  thinker  to  elicit 
the  idea  of  God  from  the  very  nature  of  the  human  rea- 
son. His  passion  for  abstruse  thought  robbed  him  of 
food  and  sleep.  Sometimes  he  could  hardly  pray.  Often 
the  night  was  a  long  watch  till  he  could  seize  his  con- 
ception and  write  it  on  the  wax  tablets  which  lay  beside 
him.  But  not  even  a  fever  of  intense  thought  such  as 
this  could  draw  Anselm's  heart  from  its  passionate  ten- 
derness and  love.  Sick  monks  in  the  infirmary  could 
relish  no  drink  save  the  juice  which  his  hand  squeezed 
for  them  from  the  grape-bunch.  In  the  later  days  of  his 
archbishopric  a  hare  chased  by  the  hounds  took  refuge 
under  his  horse,  and  his  gentle  voice  grew  loud  as  he 
forbade  a  huntsman  to  stir  in  the  chase  while  the  crea- 
ture darted  off  again  to  the  woods.  Even  the  greed  of 
lands  for  the  Church  to  which  so  many  religious  men 
yielded  found  its  characteristic  rebuke  as  the  battling 
lawyers  in  such  a  suit  saw  Anselm  quietly  close  his 
eyes  in  court  and  go  peacefully  to  sleep. 

A  sudden  impulse  of  the  Red  King  drew  the  abbot 
from  these  quiet  studies  into  the  storms  of  the  world. 
The  see  of  Canterbury  had  long  been  left  without  a  Pri- 
mate when  a  dangerous  illness  frightened  the  King  into 
the  promotion  of  Anselm.  The  Abbot,  who  happened 
at  the  time  to  be  in  England  on  the  business  of  his  house, 
was  dragged  to  the  royal  couch  and  the  cross  forced  into 
his  hands.  But  William  had  no  sooner  recovered  from 
his  sickness  than  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  an 
opponent  whose  meek  and  loving  temper  rose  into  firm- 
ness and  grandeur  when  it  fronted  the  tyranny  of  the 
King.  Much  of  the  struggle  between  William  and  the 
Archbishop  turned  on  questions  such  as  the  right  of  in- 
vestiture, which  have  little  bearing  on  our  history,  but 
the  particular  question  at  issue  was  of  less  importance 
than  the  fact  of  a  contest  at  all.  The  boldness  of  An- 
selm's attitude  not  only  broke  the  tradition  of  ecclesi- 
astical servitude  but  infused  through  the  nation  at  large 
a  new  spirit  of  independence.  The  real  character  of  the 
strife  appears  in  the  Primate's  answer  when  his  remon- 
strances against  the  lawless  exactions  from  the  Church 


132  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

were  met  by  a  demand  for  a  present  on  his  own  promo- 
tion, and  his  first  offer  of  five  hundred  pounds  was  con- 
temptuously refused.  "  Treat  me  as  a  free  man,"  Anselm 
replied,  "and  I  devote  myself  and  all  that  I  have  to 
your  service,  but  if  you  treat  me  as  a  slave  you  shall 
have  neither  me  nor  mine."  A  burst  of  the  Red  King's 
fury  drove  the  Archbishop  from  court,  and  he  finally  de- 
cided to  quit  the  country,  but  his  example  had  not  been 
lost,  and  the  close  of  William's  reign  found  a  new  spirit 
of  freedom  in  England  with  which  the  greatest  of  the 
Conqueror's  sons  was  glad  to  make  terms.  His  exile 
however  left  William  without  a  check.  Supreme  at 
home,  he  was  full  of  ambition  abroad.  As  a  soldier  the 
Red  King  was  little  inferior  to  his  father.  Normandy 
had  been  pledged  to  him  by  his  brother  Robert  in  ex- 
change for  a  sum  which  enabled  the  Duke  to  march  in 
the  first  Crusade  for  the  delivery  of  the  Holy  Land,  and 
a  rebellion  at  Le  Mans  was  subdued  by  the  fierce  energy 
with  which  William  flung  himself  at  the  news  of  it  into 
the  first  boat  he  found,  and  crossed  the  Channel  in  face 
of  a  storm.  "  Kings  never  drown,"  he  replied  contempt 
uously  to  the  remonstrances  of  his  followers.  Homage 
was  again  wrested  from  Malcolm  by  a  march  to  the  Firth 
of  Forth,  and  the  subsequent  death  of  that  king  threw 
Scotland  into  a  disorder  which  enabled  an  army  under 
Eadgar  JEtheling  to  establish  Edgar,  the  son  of  Margaret, 
as  an  English  feudatory  on  the  throne.  In  Wales  Wil- 
liam was  less  triumphant,  and  the  terrible  losses  inflicted 
on  the  heavy  Norman  cavalry  in  the  fastnesses  of  Snow- 
don  forced  him  to  fall  back  on  the  slower  but  wiser 
policy  of  the  Conqueror.  But  triumph  and  defeat  alike 
ended  in  a  strange  and  tragical  close.  In  1100  the  Red 
King  was  found  dead  by  peasants  in  a  glade  of  the  New 
Forest,  with  the  arrow  either  of  a  hunter  or  an  assassin 
in  his  breast. 

Robert  was  at  this  moment  on  his  return  from  the  Holy 
Land,  where  his  bravery  had  redeemed  much  of  his 
earlier  ill-fame,  and  the  English  crown  was  seized  by  his 
younger  brother  Henry  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the 
baronage,  who  clung  to  the  Duke  of  Normandy  and  the 


ENGLAND    UNDEE   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    133 

union  of  their  estates  on  both  sides  of  the  Channel  under 
a  single  ruler.  Their  attitude  threw  Henry,  as  it  had 
thrown  Rufus,  on  the  support  of  the  English,  and  the  two 
great  measures  which  followed  his  coronation,  his  grant 
of  a  charter,  and  his  marriage  with  Matilda,  mark  the  new 
relation  which  this  support  brought  about  between  the 
people  and  their  King.  Henry's  Charter  is  important, 
not  merely  as  a  direct  precedent  for  the  Great  Charter  of 
John,  but  as  the  first  limitation  on  the  despotism  estab- 
lished by  the  Conqueror  and  carried  to  such  a  height  by 
his  son.  The  "  evil  customs  "  by  which  the  Red  King 
had  enslaved  and  plundered  the  Church  were  explicitly 
renounced  in  it,  the  unlimited  demands  made  by  both  the 
Conqueror  and  his  son  on  the  baronage  exchanged  for 
customary  fees,  while  the  rights  of  the  people  itself, 
though  recognized  more  vaguely,  were  not  forgotten. 
The  barons  were  held  to  do  justice  to  their  under-tenants 
and  to  renounce  tyrannical  exactions  from  them,  the  King 
promising  to  restore  order  and  the  "law  of  Ead ward," 
the  old  constitution  of  the  realm,  with  the  changes  which 
his  father  had  introduced.  His  marriage  gave  a  sig- 
nificance to  these  promises  which  the  meanest  English 
peasant  could  understand  Edith,  or  Matilda,  was  the 
daughter  of  King  Malcolm  of  Scotland  and  of  Margaret, 
the  sister  of  Eadgar  ./Etheling.  She  had  been  brought 
up  in  the  nunnery  of  Romsey  by  its  abbess,  her  aunt 
Christina,  and  the  veil  which  she  had  taken  there  formed 
an  obstacle  to  her  union  with  the  King  which  was  only 
removed  by  the  wisdom  of  Anselm.  While  Flambard, 
the  embodiment  of  the  Red  King's  despotism,  was  thrown 
into  the  Tower,  the  Archbishop's  recall  had  been  one  of 
Henry's  first  acts  after  his  accession.  Matilda  appeared 
before  his  court  to  tell  her  tale  in  words  of  passionate 
earnestness.  She  had  been  veiled  in  her  childhood,  she 
asserted,  only  to  save  her  from  the  insults  of  the  rude 
soldiery  who  infested  the  land,  had  flung  the  veil  from 
her  again  and  again,  and  had  yielded  at  last  to  the  un- 
womanly taunts,  the  actual  blows  of  her  aunt.  "As 
often  as  I  stood  in  her  presence,"  the  girl  pleaded,  "  I 
wore  the  veil,  trembling  as  I  wore  it  with  indignation  and 


134  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

grief.  But  as  soon  as  I  could  get  out  of  her  sight  I  used 
to  snatch  it  from  my  head,  fling  it  on  the  ground,  and 
trample  it  under  foot.  That  was  the  way,  and  none 
other,  in  which  I  was  veiled."  Ansel m  at  once  declared 
her  free  from  conventual  bonds,  and  the  shout  of  the 
English  multitude  when  he  sat  the  crown  on  Matilda's 
brow  drowned  the  murmur  of  Churchman  or  of  baron. 
The  mockery  of  the  Norman  nobles,  who  nicknamed  the 
King  and  his  spouse  Godric  andGodgifu,  was  lost  in  the 
joy  of  the  people  at  large.  For  the  first  time  since  the 
Conquest  an  English  sovereign  sat  on  the  English  throne. 
The  blood  of  Cerdic  and  JElfred  was  to  blend  itself  with 
that  of  Rolf  and  the  Conqueror.  Henceforth  it  was  im- 
possible that  the  two  peoples  should  remain  parted  from 
each  other ;  so  quick  indeed  was  their  union  that  the  very 
name  of  Norman  had  passed  away  in  half  a  century,  and 
at  the  accession  of  Henry's  grandson  it  was  impossible  to 
distinguish  between  the  descendants  of  the  conquerors 
and  those  of  the  conquered  at  Senlac. 

Charter  and  marriage  roused  an  enthusiasm  among  his 
subjects  which  enabled  Henry  to  defy  the  claims  of  his 
brother  and  the  disaffection  of  his  nobles.  Early  in  1101 
Robert  landed  at  Portsmouth  to  win  the  crown  in  arms. 
The  great  barons  with  hardly  an  exception  stood  aloof 
from  the  king.  But  the  Norman  Duke  found  himself 
face  to  face  with  an  English  army  which  gathered  at 
Anselm's  summons  round  Henry's  standard.  The  tem- 
per of  the  English  had  rallied  from  the  panic  of  Senlac. 
The  soldiers  who  came  to  fight  for  their  King  "nowise 
feared  the  Normans."  As  Henry  rode  along  their  lines 
showing  them  how  to  keep  firm  their  shield-wall  against 
the  lances  of  Robert's  knighthood,  he  was  met  with 
shouts  for  battle.  But  King  and  Duke  alike  shrank  from 
a  contest  in  which  the  victory  of  either  side  would  have 
undone  the  Conqueror's  work.  The  one  saw  his  effort 
was  hopeless,  the  other  was  only  anxious  to  remove  his 
rival  from  the  realm,  and  by  a  peace  which  the  Count  of 
Meulan  negotiated  Robert  recognized  Henry  as  King  of 
England  while  Henry  gave  up  his  fief  in  the  Cotentin  to 
his  brother  the  Duke.  Robert's  retreat  left  Henry  free 


ENGLAND   UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    135 

to  deal  sternly  with  the  barons  who  had  forsaken  him. 
Robert  de  Lacy  was  stripped  of  his  manors  in  Yorkshire  ; 
Robert  Malet  was  driven  from  his  lands  in  Suffolk;  Ivo 
of  Grantmesnil  lost  his  vast  estates  and  went  to  the  Holy 
Land  as  a  pilgrim.  But  greater  even  than  these  was 
Robert  of  Belesme,  the  son  of  Roger  of  Montgomery,  who 
held  in  England  the  earldoms  of  Shrewsbury  and  Arun- 
del,  while  in  Normandy  he  was  Count  of  Ponthieu  and 
Alencon.  Robert  stood  at  the  head  of  the  baronage  in 
wealth  and  power  :  and  his  summons  to  the  King's  Court 
to  answer  for  his  refusal  of  aid  to  the  King  was  answered 
by  a  haughty  defiance.  But  again  the  Norman  baronage 
had  to  feel  the  strength  which  English  loyalty  gave  to 
the  Crown.  Sixty  thousand  Englishmen  followed  Henry 
to  the  attack  of  Robert's  strongholds  along  the  Welsh 
border.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  nobles  about  the  King, 
conscious  that  Robert's  fall  left  them  helpless  in  Henry's 
hands,  strove  to  bring  about  a  peace.  The  English 
soldiers  shouted  "  Heed  not  these  traitors,  our  lord  King 
Henry,"  and  with  the  people  at  his  back  the  King  stood 
firm.  Only  an  early  surrender  saved  Robert's  life.  He  \va.-> 
suffered  to  retire  to  his  estates  in  Normandy,  but  his 
English  lands  were  confiscated  to  the  Crown.  "  Reioice, 
King  Henry,"  shouted  the  English  soldiers.  "  for  you  be- 
gan to  be  a  free  King  on  that  day  when  you  conquered 
Robert  of  Belesme  and  drove  him  from  the  land."  Master 
of  his  own  realm  and  enriched  by  the  confiscated  lands 
of  the  ruined  barons  Henry  crossed  into  Normandy, 
where  the  misgovernment  of  the  Duke  had  alienated  the 
clergy  and  tradesfolk,  and  where  the  outrages  of  nobles 
like  Robert  of  Belesme  forced  the  more  peaceful  classes 
to  call  the  King  to  their  aid.  Tn  1106  his  forces  met 
those  of  his  brother  on  the  field  of  Tenchebray,  and  a  de- 
cisive English  victory  on  Norman  soil  avenged  the  shame 
of  Hastings.  The  conquered  duchy  became  a  depen- 
dency of  the  English  crown, .and  Henry's  energies  were 
frittered  away  through  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  crushing 
its  revolts,  the  hostility  of  the  French,  and  the  efforts  of 
his  nephew  William  the  son  of  Robert,  to  regain  the 
crown  which  his  father  had  lost. 


136  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

With  the  victory  of  Tenchebray  Henry  was  free  to 
enter  on  that  work  of  administration  which  was  to  make 
his  reign  memorable  in  our  history.  Successful  as  his 
wars  had  been  he  was  in  heart  no  warrior  but  a  statesman, 
and  his  greatness  showed  itself  less  in  the  field  than  in 
the  council  chamber.  His  outer  bearing  like  his  inner 
temper  stood  in  marked  contrast  to  that  of  his  father. 
Well  read,  accomplished,  easy  and  fluent  of  speech,  the 
lord  of  a  harem  of  mistresses,  the  centre  of  a  gay  court 
where  poet  and  jongleur  found  a  home,  Henry  remained 
cool,  self-possessed,  clear-sighted,  hard,  methodical,  love- 
less himself,  and  neither  seeking  nor  desiring  his  people's 
love,  but  wringing  from  them  their  gratitude  and  regard 
by  sheer  dint  of  good  government.  His  work  of  order 
was  necessarity  a  costly  work :  and  the  steady  pressure 
of  his  taxation,  a  pressure  made  the  harder  by  local  famines 
and  plagues  during  his  reign,  has  left  traces  of  the  grum- 
bling it  roused  in  the  pages  of  the  English  Chronicle. 
But  even  the  Chronicler  is  forced  to  own  amidst  his  grum- 
blings that  Henry  "  was  a  good  man,  and  great  was  the 
awe  of  him."  He  had  little  of  his  father's  creative  genius, 
of  that  far-reaching  originality  by  which  the  Conqueror 
stamped  himself  and  his  will  on  the  very  fabric  of  our 
history.  But  he  had  the  passion  for  order,  the  love  of 
justice,  the  faculty  of  organization,  the  power  of  steady 
and  unwavering  rule,  which  was  needed  to  complete  the 
Conqueror's  work.  His  aim  was  peace,  and  the  title  of  the 
Peace-loving  King  which  was  given  him  at  his  death 
showed  with  what  steadiness  and  constancy  he  earned  out 
his  aim.  In  Normandy  indeed  his  work  was  ever  and  anon 
undone  by  outbreaks  of  its  baronage,  outbreaks  sternly 
repressed  only  that  the  work  might  be  patiently  and 
calmly  taken  up  again  where  it  had  been  broken  off.  But 
in  England  his  will  was  carried  out  with  a  perfect  suc- 
cess. For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  land  had 
rest.  Without,  the  Scots  were  held  in  friendship,  the 
Welsh  were  bridled  by  a  steady  and  well-planned  scheme 
of  gradual  conquest.  Within,  the  licence  of  the  baronage 
was  held  sternly  down,  and  justice  secured  for  all.  "  He 
governed  with  a  strong  hand,''  says  Orderic,  but  the 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    187 

strong  hand  was  that  of  a  king  not  of  a  tyrant.  "  Great 
was  the  awe  of  him,"  writes  the  annalist  of  Peterborough. 
"  No  man  durst  ill-do  to  another  in  his  days.  Peace  he 
made  for  man  and  beast."  Pitiless  as  were  the  blows  he 
aimed  at  the  nobles  who  withstood  him,  they  were  blows 
which  his  English  subjects  felt  to  be  struck  in  their  cause. 
"  While  he  mastered  by  policy  the  foremost  counts  and 
lords  and  the  boldest  tyrants,  he  ever  cherished  and 
protected  peaceful  men  and  men  of  religion  and  men  of 
the  middle  class."  What  impressed  observers  most  was 
the  unswerving,  changeless  temper  of  his  rule.  The  stern 
justice,  the  terrible  punishments  he  inflicted  on  all  who 
broke  his  laws,  were  parts  of  a  fixed  system  which  differed 
widely  from  the  capricious  severity  of  a  mere  despot. 
Hardly  less  impressive  was  his  unvarying  success.  Heavy 
as  were  the  blows  which  destiny  levelled  at  him,  Henry 
bore  and  rose  unconquered  from  all.  To  the  end  of  his  life 
the  proudest  barons  lay  bound  and  blinded  in  his  prison. 
His  hoard  grew  greater  and  greater.  Normandy,  toss  as 
she  might,  lay  helpless  at  his  feet  to  the  last.  In  England 
it  was  only  after  his  death  that  men  dared  mutter  what 
evil  things  they  had  thought  of  Henry  the  Peace-lover,  of 
censure  the  pitilessness,  the  greed,  and  the  lust  which  had 
blurred  the  wisdom  and  splendor  of  his  rule. 

His  vigorous  administration  carried  out  into  detail  the 
system  of  government  which  the  Conqueror  had  sketched. 
The  vast  estates  which  had  fallen  to  the  crown  through 
revolt  and  forfeiture  were  granted  out  to  new  men  de- 
pendent on  royal  favor.  On  the  ruins  of  the  great 
feudatories  whom  he  had  crushed  Henry  built  up  a  class 
of  lesser  nobles,  whom  the  older  barons  of  the  Conquest 
looked  down  on  in  scorn,  but  who  were  strong  enough 
to  form  a  counterpoise  to  their  influence  while  they  fur- 
nished the  Crown  with  a  class  of  useful  administrators 
whom  Henry  employed  as  his  sheriffs  and  judges.  A  new 
organization  of  justice  and  finance  bound  the  kingdom 
more  tightly  together  in  Henry's  grasp.  The  Clerks  of 
the  Royal  Chapel  were  formed  into  a  body  of  secretaries 
or  royal  ministers,  whose  head  bore  the  title  of  Chancellor. 
Above  them  stood  the  Justiciar,  or  Lieutenant-Ueneral  of 


138  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  kingdom,  who  in  the  frequent  absence  of  the  King 
acted  as  Regent  of  the  realm,  and  whose  staff,  selected 
from  the  barons  connected  with  the  royal  household,  were 
formed  into  a  Supreme  Court  of  the  realm.  The  King's 
Court,  as  this  was  called,  permanently  represented  the 
whole  court  of  royal  vassals  which  had  hitherto  been 
summoned  thrice  in  the  year.  As  the  royal  council,  it 
revised  and  registered  laws,  and  its  "  counsel  and  consent," 
though  merely  formal,  preserved  the  principle  of  the  older 
popular  legislation.  As  a  court  of  justice  it  formed  the 
highest  court  of  appeal ;  it  could  call  up  any  suit  from  a 
lower  tribunal  on  the  application  of  a  suitor,  while  the 
union  of  several  sheriffdoms  under  some  of  its  members 
connected  it  closely  with  the  local  courts.  As  a  financial 
body,  its  chief  work  lay  in  the  assessment  and  collection 
of  the  revenue.  In  this  capacity  it  took  the  name  of  the 
Court  of  Exchequer  from  the  checkered  table,  much  like 
a  chess-board,  at  which  it  sat  and  on  which  accounts  were 
rendered.  In  their  financial  capacity  its  justices  became 
"  barons  of  the  Exchequer."  Twice  every  year  the  sheriff 
of  each  county  appeared  before  these  barons  and  rendered 
the  sum  of  the  fixed  rent  from  royal  domains,  the  Dane- 
geld  or  land  tax,  the  fines  of  the  local  courts,  the  feudal 
aids  from  the  baronial  estates,  which  formed  the  chief  part 
of  the  royal  revenue.  Local  disputes  respecting  these 
payments  or  the  assessment  of  the  town-rents  were  settled 
by  a  detachment  of  barons  from  the  court  who  made  the 
circuit  of  the  shires,  and  whose  fiscal  visitations  led  to  the 
judicial  visitations,  the  "judges'  circuits,"  which  still 
form  so  marked  a  feature  in  our  legal  system. 

Measures  such  as  these  changed  the  whole  temper  of 
the  Norman  rule.  It  remained  a  despotism,  but  from  this 
moment  it  was  a  despotism  regulated  and  held  in  check  by 
the  forms  of  administrative  routine.  Heavy  as  was  the  tax 
ation  under  Henry  the  First,  terrible  as  was  the  suffering 
throughout  his  reign  from  famine  and  plague,  the  peace 
and  order  which  his  government  secured  through  thirty 
years  won  a"  rest  for  the  land  in  which  conqueror  and 
conquered  blended  into  a  single  people  and  in  which  this 
people  slowly  moved  forward  to  a  new  freedom.  But  while 


ENGLAND   UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    13U 

England  thus  rested  in  peace  a  terrible  blow  broke  the 
fortunes  of  her  King.  In  1120  his  son,  William  the 
"  ^Etheling,"  with  a  crowd  of  nobles  accompanied  Henry 
on  his  return  from  Norrnaudy ;  but  the  White  ship  in 
which  he  embarked  lingered  behind  the  rest  of  the  royal 
fleet  till  the  guards  of  the  King's  treasure  pressed  its 
departure.  It  had  hardly  cleared  the  harbor  when  the 
ship's  side  struck  on  a  rock,  and  in  an  instant  it  sank 
beneath  the  waves.  One  terrible  cry,  ringing  through  the 
silence  of  the  night,  was  heard  by  the  royal  fleet ;  but 
it  was  not  till  the  morning  that  the  fatal  news  reached  the 
King.  Stern  as  he  was,  Henry  fell  senseless  to  the  ground 
and  rose  never  to  smile  again.  He  had  no  other  son,  and 
the  circle  of  his  foreign  Joes  closed  round  him  the  more 
fiercely  that  William,  the  son  of  his  captive  brother  Robert 
was  now  his  natural  heir.  Henry  hated  William  while  he 
loved  his  own  daughter  Maud,  who  had  been  married  to 
the  Emperor  Henry  the  Fifth,  but  who  had  been  restored 
by  his  death  to  her  father's  court.  The  succession  of  it 
woman  was  new  in  English  history  ;  it  was  strange  to  a 
feudal  baronage.  But  when  all  hope  of  issue  from  a  second 
wife  whom  lie  wedded  was  over  Henry  forced  priests  and 
nobles  to  swear  allegiance  to  Maud  as  their  future  mistress, 
and  affiancad  her  to  Geoffry  the  Handsome,  the  son  of 
the  one  foe  whom  he  dreaded,  Count  Fulk  of  Anjou. 

The  marriage  of  Matilda  was  but  a  step  in  the  wonder- 
ful history  by  which  the  descendants  of  a  Breton  woodman 
became  masters  not  of  Anjou  only,  but  of  Touraine, 
Maine,  and  Poitou,  of  Gascony  and  Auvergne,  of  Acqui- 
taine  and  Normandy,  and  sovereigns  at  last  of  the  great 
realm  which  Normandy  had  won.  The  legend  of  the  father 
of  their  races  carry  us  back  to  the  times  of  our  own 
^Efred,  when  the  Danes  were  ravaging  along  Loire  as  they 
ravaged  along  Thames.  In  the  heart  of  the  Breton 
border,  in  the  debateable  land  between  France  and 
Britanny,  dwelt  Tortulf  the  Forester,  half-brigand,  half- 
hunter  as  the  gloomy  days  went,  living  in  free  outlaw- 
fashion  in  the  woods  about  Rennes.  Tortulf  had  learned 
in  his  rough  forest  school  "  how  to  strike  the  foe,  to  sleep 
on  the  bare  ground,  to  bear  hunger  and  toil,  summer's 


140  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

heat  and  winter's  frost,  how  to  fear  nothing  save  ill- 
fame."  Following  King  Charles  the  Bald  in  his  struggle 
with  the  Danes,  the  woodman  won  broad  lands  along 
Loire,  and  his  son  Ingelger,  who  had  swept  the  North- 
men from  Touraine  and  the  land  to  the  west,  which  they 
had  burned  and  wasted  into  a  vast  solitude,  became  the 
first  Count  of  Anjou.  But  the  tale  of  Tortulf  and  Ingel- 
ger is  a  mere  creation  of  some  twelfth  century  jongleur. 
The  earliest  Count  whom  history  recognizes  is  Fulk  the 
Red.  Fulk  attached  himself  to  the  Dukes  of  France  who 
were  now  drawing  nearer  to  the  throne,  and  in  888  re- 
ceived from  them  in  guerdon  the  western  portion  of 
Anjou  which  lay  across  the  Mayenne.  The  story  of  his 
son  is  a  story  of  peace,  breaking  like  a  quiet  idyll  the 
war-storms  of  his  house.  Alone  of  his  race  Fulk  the 
Good  waged  no  wars  :  his  delight  was  to  sit  in  the  choir 
of  Tours  and  to  be  called  "  Canon."  One  Martinmas  eve 
Fulk  was  singing  there  in  clerkly  guise  when  the 
French  King,  Lewis  d'Outremer,  entered  the  church. 
"  He  sings  like  a  priest,"  laughed  the  King  as  his  nobles 
pointed  mockingly  to  the  figure  of  the  Count-Canon.  But 
Fulk  was  ready  with  his  reply.  "  Know,  my  lord,"  wrote 
the  Count  of  Anjou,  "  that  a  King  unlearned  is  a  crowned 
ass."  Fulk  was  in  fact  no  priest,  but  a  busy  ruler,  gov- 
erning, enforcing  peace,  and  carrying  justice  to  every 
corner  of  the  wasted  land.  To  him  alone  of  his  race  men 
gave  the  title  of  "  the  Good." 

Hampered  by  revolt,  himself  in  character  little  more 
than  a  bold,  dashing  soldier,  Fulk's  son,  Geoff ry  Grey- 
gown,  sank  almost  into  a  vassal  of  his  powerful  neighbors, 
the  Counts  of  Blois  and  Champagne.  But  this  vassalage 
was  roughly  shaken  off  by  his  successor.  Fulk  Nerra, 
Fulk  the  Black,  is  the  greatest  of  the  Angevins,  the  first 
in  whom  we  can  trace  that  marked  type  of  character 
which  their  house  was  to  preserve  through  two  hundred 
years.  He  was  without  natural  affection.  In  his  youth 
he  burnt  a  wife  at  the  stake,  and  legend  told  how  he  led 
her  to  her  doom  decked  out  in  his  gayest  attire.  In 
his  old  age  he  waged  his  bitterest  war  against  his  son,  and 
exacted  from  him  when  vanquished  a  humiliation  which 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    141 

men  reserved  for  the  deadliest  of  their  foes.  "  You  are 
conquered,  you  are  conquered !  "  shouted  the  old  man  in 
fierce  exultation,  as  Geoffry,  bridled  and  saddled  like  a 
beast  of  burden,  crawled  for  pardon  to  his  father's  feet. 
In  Fulk  first  appeared  that  low  type  of  superstition  which 
startled  even  superstitious  ages  in  the  early  Plautagenete. 
Robber  as  he  was  of  Church  lands,  and  contemptuous  of 
eeclesiastical  censures,  the  fear  of  the  end  of  the  world 
drove  Fulk  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  Barefoot  and  with 
the  strokes  of  the  scourge  falling  heavily  on  his  shoulders 
the  Count  had  himself  dragged  by  a  halter  through  the 
streets  of  Jerusalem,  and  courted  the  doom  of  martyrdom 
by  his  wild  outcries  of  penitence.  He  rewarded  the  fidel- 
ity of  Herbert  of  Le  Mans,  whose  aid  saved  him  from  utter 
ruin,  by  entrapping  him  into  captivity  and  robbing  him 
of  his  lauds.  He  secured  the  terrified  friendship  of  the 
French  King  by  despatching  twelve  assassins  to  cut  down 
before  his  eyes  the  minister  who  had  troubled  it.  Familiar 
as  the  age  was  with  treason  and  rapine  and  blood,  it  re- 
coiled from  the  cool  cynicism  of  his  crimes,  and  believed 
the  wrath  of  Heaven  to  have  been  revealed  against  the 
union  of  the  worst  forms  of  evil  in  Fulk  the  Black.  But 
neither  the  wrath  of  Heaven  nor  the  curses  of  men  broke 
with  a  single  mishap  the  fifty  years  of  his  success. 

At  his  accession  in  987  Anjou  was  the  least  important 
of  the  greater  provinces  of  France.  At  his  death  in  1040 
it  stood,  if  not  in  extent,  at  least  in  real  power,  first 
among  them  all.  Cool-headed,  clear-sighted,  quick  to 
resolve,  quicker  to  strike,  Fulk's  career  was  one  long 
series  of  victories  over  all  his  rivals.  He  was  a  consum- 
mate general,  and  he  had  the  gift  of  personal  bravery, 
which  was  denied  to  some  of  his  greatest  descendants. 
There  was  a  moment  in  the  first  of  his  battles  when  the 
day  seemed  lost  for  Anjou  ,  a  feigned  retreat  of  the 
Bretons  drew  the  Angevin  horsemen  into  a  line  of  hidden 
pitfalls,  and  the  Count  himself  was  flung  heavily  to  the 
ground.  Dragged  from  the  medley  of  men  and  horses, 
he  swept  down  almost  singly  on  the  foe  "as  a  storm- 
wind"  (so  rang  the  paean  of  the  Angevins)  "sweeps  down 
on  the  thick  corn-rows,"  and  the  field  was  won.  But  to 


142  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

these  qualities  of  the  warrior  he  added  a  power  of  politi- 
cal organization,  a  capacity  for  far-reaching  combinations, 
a  faculty  of  statesmanship,  which  became  the  heritage  of 
his  race,  and  lifted  them  as  high  above  the  intellectual 
level  of  the  rulers  of  their  time  as  their  shameless  wicked- 
ness degraded  them  below  the  level  of  man.  His  over- 
throw of  Britanny  on  the  old  field  of  Conquereux  was 
followed  by  the  gradual  absorption  of  Southern  Touraine ; 
a  victory  at  Poutlevoi  crushed  the  rival  house  of  Blois ; 
the  seizure  of  Saumur  completed  his  conquests  in  the 
south,  while  Northern  Touraine  was  won  bit  by  bit  till 
only  Tours  resisted  the  Angevin.  The  treacherous 
seizure  of  its  Count,  Herbert  Wakedog,  left  Maine  at  his 
mercy. 

His  work  of  conquest  was  completed  by  his  son. 
Geoffry  Martel  wrested  Tours  from  the  Count  of  Blois, 
and  by  the  seizure  of  La  Mans  brought  his  border  to  the 
Norman  frontier.  Here  however  his  advance  was  checked 
by  the  genius  of  William  the  Conqueror,  and  with  his 
death  the  greatness  of  Anjou  came  for  a  while  to  an  end. 
Stripped  of  Maine  by  the  Normans  and  broken  by  dis- 
sensions within,  the  weak  and  profligate  ruler  of  Fulk 
Rechin  left  Anjou  powerless.  But  in  1109  it  woke  to 
fresh  energ}-  with  the  accession  of  his  son,  Fulk  of*J  erusa- 
lem.  Now  urging  the  turbulent  Norman  nobles  to  revolt, 
now  supporting  Robert's  son,  William,  and  his  strife  with 
his  uncle,  offering  himself  throughout  as  the  loyal  sup- 
porter of  the  French  kingdom  which  was  now  hemmed  in 
on  almost  every  side  by  the  forces  of  the  English  king  and 
of  his  allies  the  Counts  of  Blois  and  Champagne,  Fulk 
was  the  one  enemy  whom  Henry  the  First  really  feared. 
It  was  to  disarm  his  restless  hostility  that  the  King  gave 
the  hand  of  Matilda  to  Geoffry  the  Handsome.  But  the 
hatred  between  Norman  and  Angevin  had  been  too  bitter 
to  make  such  a  marriage  popular,  and  the  secrecy  with 
which  it  was  brought  about  was  held  by  the  barons  to 
free  them  from  the  oath  they  had  previously  sworn.  As 
no  baron  if  he  was  soilless  could  give  a  husband  to  his 
daughter  save  with  his  lord's  consent,  the  nobles  held  by 
a  strained  analogy  that  their  own  assent  was  needful  to 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    143 

the  marriage  of  Maud.  Henry  found  a  more  pressing 
danger  in  the  greed  of  her  husband  Geoffry,  whose  habit 
of  wearing  the  common  broom  of  Anjou,  the  planta 
genista,  in  his  helmet  gave  him  the  title  of  Plantagenet. 
His  claim  ended  at  last  in  intrigues  with  the  Norman 
nobles,  and  Henry  hurried  to  the  border  to  meet  an 
Angevin  invasion ;  but  the  plot  broke  down  at  his 
presence,  the  Angevins  retired,  and  at  the  close  of  1135 
the  old  King  withdrew  to  the  Forest  of  Lyons  to  die. 

"  God  give  him,"  wrote  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen 
from  Henry's  death-bed,  "  the  peace  he  loved."  With 
him  indeed  closed  the  long  peace  of  the  Norman  rule. 
An  outburst  of  anarchy  followed  on  the  news  of  his  de- 
parture, and  in  the  midst  of  the  turmoil  Earl  Stephen, 
his  nephew,  appeared  at  the  gates  of  London.  Stephen 
was  a  son  of  the  Conqueror's  daughter,  Adela,  who  had 
married  a  Count  of  Blois  ;  he  had  been  brought  up  at 
the  English  court,  had  been  made  Count  of  Mortain  by 
Henry,  had  become  Count  of  Boulogne  by  his  marriage, 
and  as  head  of  the  Norman  baronage  had  been  the  first 
to  pledge  himself  to  support  Matilda's  succession.  But 
his  own  claim  as  nearest  male  heir  of  the  Conqueror's 
blood  (for  his  cousin,  the  son  of  Robert,  had  fallen  some 
years  before  in  Flanders)  was  supported  by  his  personal 
popularity ;  mere  swordsman  as  he  was,  his  good-humor, 
his  generosity,  his  very  prodigality  made  Stephen  a  fa- 
vorite with  all.  No  noble  however  had  as  yet  ventured 
to  join  him  nor  had  any  town  opened  its  gates  when 
London  poured  out  to  meet  him  with  uproarious  wel- 
come. Neither  baron  nor  prelate  was  present  to  consti- 
tute a  National  Council,  but  the  great  city  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  take  their  place.  The  voice  of  her  citizens  had 
long  been  accepted  as  representative  of  the  popular 
assent  in  the  election  of  a  king  ;  but  it  marks  the  pro- 
gress of  English  independence  under  Henry  that  London 
now  claimed  of  itself  the  right  of  election.  Undismayed 
by  the  absence  of  the  hereditary  counsellors  of  the  crown 
its  "  Aldermen  and  wise  folk  gathered  together  the  folk- 
moot,  and  these  providing  at  their  own  will  for  the  good 
oFthe  realm  unanimously  resolved  to  choose  a  king."  The 


144  BISTORT   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

solemn  deliberation  ended  in  the  choice  of  Stephen,  the 
citizens  swore  to  defend  the  King  with  money  and  blood, 
Stephen  swore  to  apply  his  whole  strength  to  the  pacifica- 
tion and  good  government  of  the  realm.  It  was  in  fact 
the  new  union  of  conquered  and  conquerors  into  a  single 
England  that  did  Stephen's  work.  The  succession  of 
Maud  meant  the  rule  of  Geoffry  of  Anjou,  and  to  Norman 
as  to  Englishman  the  rule  of  the  Angevin  was  a  foreign 
rule.  The  welcome  Stephen  won  at  London  and  Win- 
chester, his  seizure  of  the  royal  treasure,  the  adhesion  of 
the  Justiciar  Bishop  Roger  to  his  cause,  the  reluctant 
consent  of  the  Archbishop,  the  hopelessness  of  aid  from 
Anjou,  where  Geoffry  was  at  this  moment  pressed  by 
revolt,  the  need  above  all  of  some  king  to  meet  the  out- 
break of  anarchy  which  followed  Henry's  death,  secured 
Stephen  the  voice  of  the  baronage.  He  was  crowned  at 
Christmas-tide  ;  and  soon  joined  by  Robert  Earl  of  Glou- 
cester, a  bastard  son  of  Henry  and  the  chief  of  his  nobles ; 
while  the  issue  of  a  charter  from  Oxford  in  1136,  a 
charter  which  renewed  the  dead  King's  pledge  of  good 
government,  promised  another  Henry  to  the  realm.  The 
charter  surrendered  all  forests  made  in  the  last  reign  as 
a  sop  to  the  nobles,  it  conciliated  the  Church  by  grant- 
ing freedom  of  election  and  renouncing  all  right  to  the 
profits  of  vacant  churches,  it  won  the  people  by  a  pledge 
to  abolish  the  tax  of  Danegeld. 

The  king's  first  two  years  were  years  of  success  and 
prosperity.  Two  risings  of  barons  in  the  east  and  west 
were  easily  put  down,  and  in  1137  Stephen  passed  into 
Normandy  and  secured  the  Duchy  against  an  attack  from 
Anjou.  But  already  the  elements  of  trouble  were  gather- 
ing round  him.  Stephen  was  a  mere  soldier,  with  few 
kingly  qualities  save  that  of  a  soldier's  bravery  ;  and 
the  realm  soon  began  to  slip  from  his  grasp.  He  turned 
against  himself  the  jealous  dread  of  foreigners  to  which 
he  owed  his  accession  by  surrounding  himself  with  hired 
knights  from  Flanders ;  he  drained  the  treasury  by 
creating  new  earls  endowed  with  pensions  from  it,  and 
recruited  his  means  by  base  coinage.  His  consciousness 
of  the  gathering  storm  only  drove  Stephen  to  bind  his 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    145 

friends  to  him  by  suffering  them  to  fortify  castles  and  to 
renew  the  feudal  tyranny  which  Henry  had  struck  down. 
But  the  long  reign  of  the  dead  king  had  left  the  Crown 
so  strong  that  even  yet  Stephen  could  hold  his  own.  A 
plot  which  Robert  of  Gloucester  had  been  weaving  from 
the  outset  of  his  reign  came  indeed  to  a  head  in  1138,  and 
the  Earl's  revolt  stripped  Stephen  of  Caen  and  half  Nor- 
mandy. But  when  his  partisans  in  England  rose  in  the 
south  and  the  west  and  the  King  of  Scots,  whose  friend- 
ship Stephen  had  bought  in  the  opening  of  his  reign  by 
the  cession  of  Carlisle,  poured  over  the  northern  border, 
the  nation  stood  firmly  by  the  King.  Stephen  himself 
marched  on  the  western  rebels  and  soon  left  them  few 
strongholds  save  Bristol.  His  people  fought  for  him  in 
the  north.  The  pillage  and  cruelties  of  the  wild  tribes 
of  Galloway  and  the  Highlands  roused  the  spirit  of  the 
Yorkshiremen.  Baron  and  freeman  gathered  at  York 
round  Archbishop  Thurstan  and  marched  to  the  field  of 
Northallerton  to  await  the  foe.  The  sacred  banners  of 
St.  Cuthbert  of  Durham,  St.  Peter  of  York,  St.  John  of 
Beverley,  and  St.  Wilfred  of  Ripon  hung  from  a  pole 
fixed  in  a  four-wheeled  car  which  stood  in  the  centre  of 
the  host.  The  first  onset  of  David's  host  was  a  terrible 
one.  "  I  who  wear  no  armor,"  shouted  the  chief  of  the 
Galwegians,  u  will  go  as  far  this  day  as  any  one  with 
breastplate  of  mail ;  "  his  men  charged  with  wild  shouts 
of  u  Albin,  Albin,"  and  were  followed  by  the  Norman 
knighthood  of  the  Lowlands.  But  their  repulse  was 
complete  ;  the  fierce  hordes  dashed  in  vain  against  the 
close  English  ranks  around  the  Standard,  and  the  whole 
army  fled  in  confusion  to  Carlisle. 

Weak  indeed  as  Stephen  was,  the  administrative  organi- 
zation of  Henry  still  did  its  work.  Roger  remained 
justiciar,  his  son  was  chancellor,  his  nephew  Nigel,  the 
Bishop  of  Ely,  was  treasurer.  Finance  and  justice  were 
thus  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  single  family  which 
preserved  amidst  the  deepening  misrule  something  of  the 
old  order  and  rule,  and  which  stood  at  the  head  of  the 
"  new  men,"  whom  Henry  had  raised  into  importance  and 
made  the  instruments  of  his  will.  These  n.ew  men  were 


146  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

still  weak  by  the  side  of  the  older  nobles  ;  and  conscious 
of  the  jealousy  and  ill-will  with  which  they  were  regarded 
they  followed  in  self-defence  the  example  which  the 
.barons  were  setting  in  building  and  fortifying  castles  on 
their  domains.  Roger  and  his  house,  the  objects  from 
their  official  position  of  a  deeper  grudge  than  any,  were 
carried  away  by  the  panic.  The  justiciar  and  his  son 
fortified  their  castles,  and  it  was  only  with  a  strong  force 
at  their  back  that  the  prelates  appeared  at  court.  Their 
attitude  was  one  to  rouse  Stephen's  jealousy,  and  the 
news"  of  Matilda's  purpose  of  invasion  lent  strength  to  the 
doubts  which  the  nobles  cast  on  their  fidelity.  All  the 
weak  violence  of  the  King's  temper  suddenly  broke  out. 
He  seized  Roger  the  Chancellor  and  the  Bishop  of  Lwi- 
colu  when  they  appeared  at  Oxford  in  June,  1139,  and 
forced  them  to  surrender  their  strongholds.  Shame  broke 
the  justiciar's  heart ;  he  died  at  the  close  of  the  year,  and 
his  nephew  Nigel  of  Ely  was  driven  from  the  realm.  But 
the  fall  of  this  house  shattered  the  whole  Astern  of  gov- 
ernment. The  King's  court  and  the  Exchequer  ceased 
to  work  at  a  moment  when  the  landing  of  Earl  Robert 
and  the  Empress  Matilda  set  Stephen  face  to  face  with  a 
danger  greater  than  he  had  yet  encountered,  while  the 
clergy  alienated  by  the  arrest  of  the  Bishops  and  the  dis- 
regard of  their  protests,  stood  angrily  aloof. 

The  three  bases  of  Henry's  system  of  government,  the 
subjection  of  the  baronage  to  the  law,  the  good-will  of 
the  Chuvch,  and  the  organization  of  justice  and  finance, 
were  now  utterly  ruined  ;  and  for  the  seventeen  years 
which  passed  from  this  hour  to  the  Treaty  of  Walling- 
ford  England  was  given  up  to  the  miseries  of  civil  war. 
The  country  was  divided  between  the  adherents  of  the 
two  rivals,  the  West  supporting  Matilda,  London  and 
and  the  East  Stephen.  A  defeat  at  Lincoln  in  1141  left 
the  latter  a  captive  in  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  while 
Matilda  was  received  throughout  the  land  as  its  "  Lady." 
•But  the  disdain  with  which  she  repulsed  the  claim  of  Lon- 
don to  the  enjoyment  of  its  older  privileges  called  its 
burghers  to  arms;  her  resolve  to  hold  Stephen  a  prisoner 
roused  his  party  again  to  life,  and  she  was  driven  to  Ox- 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    147 

ford  to  be  besieged  there  in  1142  by  Stephen  himself, 
who  had  obtained  his  release  in  exchange  for  Earl  Robert 
after  the  capture  of  the  Earl  in  a  battle  at  Devizes.  She 
escaped  from  the  castle,  but  with  the  death  of  Robert  her 
struggle  became  a  hopeless  one,  and  in  1146  she  withdrew 
to  Normandy.  The  war  was  now  a  mere  chaos  of  pillage 
and  bloodshed.  The  royal  power  came  to  an  end.  The 
royal  courts  were  suspended,  for  not  a  baron  or  bishop 
would  come  at  the  King's  call.  The  bishops  met  in 
council  to  protest,  but  their  protests  and  excommunica- 
tions fell  on  deafened  ears.  For  the  first  and  last  time 
in  her  history  England  was  in  the  hands  of  the  baronage, 
and  their  outrages  showed  from  what  horrors  the  stern 
rule  of  the  Norman  Kings  had  saved  her.  Castles  sprang 
up  everywhere.  "  They  filled  the  land  with  castles," 
says  the  terrible  annalist  of  the  time.  "  They  greatly 
oppressed  the  wretched  people  by  making  them  work  at 
these  castles,  and  when  they  were  finished  they  filled 
them  with  devils  and  armed  men."  In  each  of  these 
robber-holds  a  petty  tyrant  ruled  like  a  king,  The  strife 
for  the  Crown  had  broken  into  a  medley  of  feuds  between 
baron  and  baron,  for  none  could  brook  an  equal  or  a  su- 
perior in  his  fellow.  "  They  fought  among  themselves 
with  deadly  hatred,  they  spoiled  the  fairest  lands  with 
firo  and  rapine  ;  in  what  had  been  the  most  fertile  of 
counties  they  destroyed  almost  all  the  provision  of  bread." 
For  fight  as  they  might  with  one  another,  all  were  $&  one 
in  the  plunder  of  the  land.  Towns  were  put  to  ransom. 
Villages  were  sacked  and  burned.  All  who  were  deemed 
to  have  goods,  whether  men  or  women,  were  carried  off 
and  flung  into  dungeons  and  tortured  till  they  yielded 
up  their  wealth.  No  ghastilier  picture  of  a  nation's 
misery  has  ever  been  painted  than  that  which  closes  the 
English  Chronicle  whose  last  accents  falter  out  amidst 
the  horrors  of  the  time.  "  They  hanged  up  men  by  their 
feet  and  smoked  them  with  foul  smoke.  Some  were 
hanged  up  by  their  thumbs,  others  by  the  head,  and  burn^ 
in#  things  were  hung  on  to  their  feet.  They  put  knotted 
strings  about  men's  heads,  and  writhed  them  till  they 
went  to  the  brain.  They  put  men  into  prisons  where 


148  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

adders  and  snakes  and  toads  were  crawling,  and  so  they 
tormented  them,  Some  they  put  into  a  chest  short  and 
narrow  and  not  deep  and  that  had  sharp  stones  within, 
and  forced  men  therein  so  that  they  broke  all  their  limbs. 
In  many  of  the  castles  were  hateful  and  grim  things 
called  rachenteges,  which  two  or  three  men  had  enough 
to  do  to  carry  .  It  was  thus  made  ;  it  was  fastened  to  a 
beam  and  had  a  sharp  iron  to  go  about  a  man's  neck  and 
throat,  so  that  he  might  noways  sit,  or  lie,  or  sleep,  but 
he  bore  all  the  iron.  Many  thousands  they  starved  with 
hunger." 

It  was  only  after  years  of  this  feudal  anarchy  that 
England  was  rescued  from  it  by  the  efforts  of  the  Church. 
The  political  influence  of  the  Church  had  been  greatly 
lessened  by  the  Conquest:  for  pious,  learned,  and  ener- 
getic as  the  bulk  of  the  Conqueror's  bishops  were,  they 
were  not  Englishmen.  Till  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First 
no  Englishman  occupied  an  English  see.  The  sever- 
ance of  the  higher  clergy  from  the  lower  priesthood 
and  from  the  people  went  far  to  paralyze  the  constitu- 
tional influence  of  the  Church.  Anselm  stood  alone 
against  Rufus,  and  when  Anselm  was  gone  no  voice  of 
ecclesiastical  freedom  broke  the  silence  of  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  First.  But  at  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  and 
throughout  the  reign  of-Stephen  England  was  stirred  by 
the  first  of  those  great  religious  movements  which  it  was 
to  ejiperience  afterwards  in  the  preaching  of  the  Friars, 
the  Lollardism  of  Wyclif,  the  Reformation,  the  Puritan 
enthusiasm,  and  the  mission  work  of  the  Wesley s.  Every- 
where in  town  and  country  men  banded  themselves  to- 
gether for  prayer :  hermits  flocked  to  the  woods  :  noble 
and  churl  welcomed  the  austere  Cistercians,  a  reformed 
offshoot  of  the  Benedictine  order,  as  they  spread  over 
the  moors  and  forests  of  the  North.  A  new  spirit  of 
devotion  woke  the  slumbers  of  the  religious  houses,  and 
penetrated  alike  to  the  home  of  the  noble  and  the  trader. 
London  took  its  full  share  in  the  revival.  The  city  was 
proud  of  its  religion,  its  thirteen  conventual  and  more 
than  a  hundred  parochial  churches.  The  new  impulse 
changed  its  very  aspect.  In  the  midst  of  the  city  Bishop 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    149 

Richard  busied  himself  with  the  vast  cathedral  church  of 
St.  Paul  which  Bishop  Maurice  had  begun ;  barges  came 
up  the  river  with  stones  from  Caen  for  the  great  arches 
that  moved  the  popular  wonder,  while  street  and  lane 
were  being  levelled  to  make  room  for  its  famous  church- 
yard. Rahere,  a  minstrel  at  Henry's  court,  raised  the 
priory  of  Saint  Bartholomew  beside  Smithfield.  Alfune 
built  St.  Giles's  at  Cripplcgate.  The  old  English  Cnich- 
tenagild  surrendered  their  soke  of  Algate  as  a  site  for  the 
new  priory  of  the  Holy  Trinity.  The  tale  of  this  house 
paints  admirably  the  temper  of  the  citizens  at  the  time. 
Its  founder,  Prior  Norman,  built  church  and  cloister  and 
bought  books  and  vestments  in  so  liberal  a  fashion  that 
no  money  remained  to  buy  bread.  The  canons  were  at 
their  last  gasp  when  the  city-folk,  looking  into  the  refec- 
tory as  they  passed  round  the  cloister  in  their  usual 
Sunday  procession,  saw  the  tables  laid  but  not  a  single 
loaf  on  them.  "•  Here  is  a  fine  set  out,"  said  the  citizens ; 
"  but  where  is  the  bread  to  come  from  ?  "  The  women 
who  were  present  vowed  each  to  bring  a  loaf  every  Sun- 
day, and  there  was  soon  bread  enough  and  to  spare  for 
the  priory  and  its  priests. 

We  see  the  strength  of  the  new  movement  in  the  new 
class  of  ecclesiastics  whom  it  forced  on  to  the  stage.  Men 
like  Archbishop  Theobald  drew  whatever  influence  they 
wielded  from  a  belief  in  their  holiness  of  life  and  unsel- 
fishness of  aim.  The  paralysis  of  the  church  ceased  as 
the  new  impulse  bound  prelacy  and  people  together,  and 
at  the  moment  we  have  reached  its  power  was  found 
strong  enough  to  wrest  England  out  of  the  chaos  of 
feudal  misrule.  In  the  early  part  of  Stephen's  reign  his 
brother  Henry,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  who  had  been 
appointed  in  1.139  Papal  Legate  for  the  realm,  had  striven 
to  supply  the  absence  of  any  royal  or  national  authority 
by  convening  synods  of  bishops,  and  by  asserting  the 
moral  right  of  the  Church  to  declare  sovereigns  unworthy 
of  the  throne.  The  compact  between  king  and  people 
which  became  a  part  of  constitutional  law  in  the  Charter 
of  Henry  had  gathered  new  force  in  the  Charter  of 
Stephen,  but  its  legitimate  consequence  in  the  responsi- 


150  HISTORY   OF    THE    ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

bility  of  the  crown  for  the  execution  of  the  compact  was 
first  drawn  out  by  these  ecclesiastical  councils.  From 
their  alternate  depositions  of  Stephen  and  Matilda  flowed 
the  after  depositions  of  Edward  and  Richard,  and  the 
solemn  act  by  which  the  succession  was  changed  in  the 
case  of  James.  Extravagant  and  unauthorized  as  their 
expression  of  it  may  appear,  they  expressed  the  right  of  a 
nation  to  good  government.  Henry  of  Winchester, %k  half 
monk,  half  soldier,"  as  he  was  called,  possessed  too  little 
religious  influence  to  wield  a  really  spiritual  power,  and 
it  was  only  at  the  close  of  Stephen's  reign  that  the 
nation  really  found  a  moral  leader  in  Theobald,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury.  ^  Theobald's  ablest  agent  and  ad- 
viser was  Thomas,  the  son  of  Gilbert  Beket,  a  leading 
citizen  and,  it  is  said,  Portreeve  of  London,  the  site  of 
whose  house  is  still  marked  by  the  Mercer's  chapel  in 
Cheapside.  His  mother  Rohese  was  a  type  of  the  devout 
woman  of  her  day  ;  she  weighed  her  boy  every  year  on 
his  birthday  against  money,  clothes,  and  provisions  which 
she  gave  to  the  poor.  Thomas  grew  up  amidst  the  Nor- 
man barons  and  clerks  who  frequented  his  father's  house 
with  a  genial  freedom  of  character  tempered  by  the  Nor- 
man refinement ;  he  passed  from  the  school  of  Merton 
to  the  University  of  Paris,  and  returned  to  fling  himself 
into  the  life  of  the  young  nobles  of  the  time.  Tall,  hand- 
some, bright-eyed,  ready  of  wit  and  speech,  his  firmness 
of  temper  showed  itself  in  his  very  sports  ;  to  rescue  his 
hawk  which  had  fallen  into  the  water  he  onc,e  plunged 
into  a  millrace  and  was  all  but  crushed  by  the  wheel. 
The  loss  of  his  father's  wealth  drove  him  to  the  court  of 
Archbishop  Theobald,  and  he  soon  became  the  Primate's 
confidant  in  his  plans  for  the  rescue  of  England. 

The  natural  influence  which  the  Primate  would  have 
exerted  was  long  held  in  suspense  by  the  superior  position 
of  Bishop  Henry  of  Winchester  as  Papal  Legate  ;  but  this 
office  ceased  with  the  Pope  who  granted  it,  and  when  in 
1150  it  was  transferred  to  the  Archbishop  himself  Theo- 
bald soon  made  his  weight  felt.  The  long  disorder  of  the 
realm  was  producing  its  natural  reaction  in  exhaustion 
und  disgust,  as  well  as  in  a  general  craving  for  return  to 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    151 

the  line  of  hereditary  succession  whose  breaking  seemed 
the  cause  of  the  nation's  woes.  But  the  growth  of  their 
sou  Henry  to  manhood  set  naturally  aside  the  pretensions 
both  of  Count  Geoffry  and  Matilda.  Young  as  he  was 
Henry  already  showed  the  cool  long-sighted  temper  which 
was  to  be  his  characteristic  on  the  throne.  Foiled  in  an 
early  attempt  to  grasp  the  crown,  he  looked  quietly  on 
at  the  disorder  which  was  doing  his  work  till  the  death  of 
his  father  at  the  close  of  llol  left  him  master  of  Nor- 
mandy and  Anjou.  In  the  spring  of  the  following  year 
his  marriage  with  its  duchess,  Eleanor  of  Poitou,  added 
Acquitaine  to  his  dominions.  Stephen  saw  the  gathering 
storm,  and  strove  to  meet  it.  He  called  on  the  bishops 
and  baronage  to  secure  the  succession  of  his  son  Eustace 
by  consenting  to  his  association  with  him  in  the  kingdom. 
But  the  moment  was  now  come  for  Theobald  to  play  his 
part.  He  was  already  negotiating  through  Thomas  of 
London  with  Henry  and  the  Pope  ;  he  met  Stephen's  plans 
by  a  refusal  to  swear  fealty  to  his  son,  and  the  bishops,  in 
spite  of  Stephen's  threats,  went  with  their  head.  The 
blow  was  soon  followed  by  a  harder  one.  Thomas,  as 
Theobald's  agent,  invited  Henry  to  appear  in  England, 
and  though  the  Duke  disappointed  his  supporters'  hopes 
by  the  scanty  number  of  men  he  brought  with  him  in  1153, 
his  weakness  proved  in  the  end  a  source  of  strength.  It 
was  not  to  foreigners,  men  said,  that  Henry  owed  his  suc- 
cess but  to  the  arms'  of  Englishmen.  An  English  army 
gathered  round  him,  and  as  the  hosts  of  Stephen  and  the 
Duke  drew  together  a  battle  seemed  near  which  would 
decide  the  fate  of  the  realm.  But  Theobald  who  was  now 
firmly  supported  by  the  greater  barons  again  interfered 
and  forced  the  rivals  to  an  agreement.  To  the  excited 
partisans  of  the  house  of  Anjou  it  seemed  as  if  the  nobles 
were  simply  playing  their  own  game  in  the  proposed  set- 
tlement and  striving  to  preserve  their  power  by  a  balance 
of  masters.  The  suspicion  was  probably  groundless,  but 
all  fear  vanished  with  the  death  of  Eustace,  who  rode  off 
from  his  father's  camp,  maddened  with  the  ruin  of  his 
hopes,  to  die  in  August,  smitten,  as  men  believed,  by  the 
hand  of  God  for  his  plunder  of  abbeys.  The  ground  was 


152  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

now  clear,  and  in  November  the  Treaty  of  Wallingford 
abolished  the  evils  of  the  long  anarchy.  The  castles  were 
to  be  razed,  the  crown  lands  resumed,  the  foreign  mer- 
cenaries banished  from  the  country,  and  sheriffs  appointed 
to  restore  order.  Stephen  was  recognized  as  King,  and 
in  tarn  recognized  Henry  as  his  heir.  The  Duke  received 
at  Oxford  the  fealty  of  the  barons,  and  passed  into  Nor- 
mandy in  the  spring  of  1154.  The  work  of  reformation 
had  already  begun.  Stephen  resented  indeed  the  pressure 
which  Henry  put  on  him  to  enforce  the  destruction  of  the 
castles  built  during  the  anarchy  ;  but  Stephen's  resistance 
was  but  the  pettish  outbreak  of  a  ruined  man.  He  was 
in  fact  fast  drawing  to  the  grave  ;  and  on  his  death  in 
October  1164  Henry  returned  to  take  the  crown  without 
a  blow. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HENRY     THE     SECOND. 

1154—1189. 

YOUNG  as  he  was,  and  he  had  reached  but  his  twenty- 
first  year  when  he  returned  to  England  as  its  King,  Henry 
mounted  the  throne  with  a  purpose  of  government  which 
his  reign  carried  steadily  out.  His  practical,  serviceable 
frame  suited  the  hardest  worker  of  his  time.  There  was 
something  in  his  build  and  look,  in  the  square  stout  form, 
the  fiery  face,  the  close-cropped  hair,  the  prominent  eyes, 
the  bull  neck,  the  coarse  strong  hands,  the  bowed  legs, 
that  marked  out  the  keen,  stirring,  coarse-fibred  man  of 
business.  "  He  never  sits  down,"  said  one  who  observed 
him  closely ;  "  he  is  always  on  his  legs  from  morning  till 
night."  Orderly  in  business,  careless  of  appearance,  spar- 
ing in  diet,  never  resting  or  giving  his  servants  rest,  chatty, 
inquisitive,  endowed  with  a  singular  charm  of  address  and 
strength  of  memory,  obstinate  in  love  or  hatred,  a  fair 
scholar,  a  great  hunter,  his  general  air  that  of  a  rough, 
passionate,  busy  man,  Henry's  personal  character  told 
directly  on  the  character  of  his  reign.  His  accession 
marks  the  period  of  amalgamation  when  neighborhood 
and  traffic  and  intermarriage  drew  Englishmen  and  Nor- 
mans into  a  single  people.  A  national  feeling  was  thus 
springing  up  before  which  the  barriers  of  the  older  feudal- 
ism were  to  be  swept  away.  Henry  had  even  less  rever- 
ence for  the  feudal  past  than  the  men  of  his  day  :  he  was 
indeed  utterly  without  the  imagination  and  reverence 
which  enable  men  to  sympathize  with  any  past  at  all. 
He  had  a  practical  man's  impatience  of  the  obstacles 
thrown  in  the  way  of  his  reforms  by  the  older  constitu- 
tion of  the  realm,  nor  could  he  understand  other  men's 


154  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

reluctance  to  purchase  undoubted  improvements  by  the 
sacrifice  of  customs  and  traditions  of  bygone  days.  With- 
out any  theoretical  hostility  to  the  co-ordinate  powers  of 
the  state,  it  seemed  to  him  a  perfectly  reasonable  and 
natural  course  to  trample  either  baronage  or  Church  under 
foot  to  gain  his  end  of  good  government.  He  saw  clearly 
that  the  remedy  for  such  anarchy  as  England  had  endured 
under  Stephen  lay  in  the  establishment  of  a  kingly  rule 
unembarrassed  by  any  privileges  of  order  or  class,  admin- 
istered by  royal  servants,  and  in  whose  public  administra- 
tion the  nobles  acted  simply  as  delegates  of  the  sovereign. 
His  work  was,  to  lie  in  the  organization  of  judicial  and 
administrative  reforms  which  realized  this  idea.  But  of 
the  currents  of  thought  and  feeling  which  were  tending 
in  the  same  direction  he  knew  nothing.  What  he  did 
for  the  moral  and  social  impulses  which  were  telling  on 
men  about  him  was  simply  to  let  them  alone.  Religion 
grew  more  and  more  identified  with  patriotism  under  the 
eyes  of  a  King  who  whispered,  and  scribbled,  and  looked 
at  picture-books  during  mass,  who  never  confessed,  and 
cursed  God  in  wild  frenzies  of  blasphemy.  Great  peoples 
formed  themselves  on  both  sides  of  the  sea  round  a  sove- 
reign who  bent  the  whole  force  of  his  mind  to  hold  to- 
gether an  Empire  which  the  growth  of  nationality  must 
inevitably  destroy.  There  is  throughout  a  tragic  grandeur 
in  the  irony  of  Henry's  position,  that  of  a  Sforza  of  the 
-fifteenth  century  set  in  the  midst  of  the  twelfth,  building 
up  by  patience  and  policy  and  craft  a  dominion  alien  to 
the  deepest  sympathies  of  his  age  and  fated  to  be  swept 
away  in  the  end  by  popular  forces  to  whose  existence  his 
very  cleverness  and  activity  blinded  him.  But  whether 
by  the  anti-national  temper  of  his  general  system  or  by  the 
administrative  reforms  of  his  English  rule  his  policy  did 
more  than  that  of  all  his  predecessors  to  prepare  England 
for  the  unity  and  freedom  which  the  fall  of  his  house  was 
to  reveal. 

He  had  been  placed  on  the  throne,  as  we  have  seen,  by 
the  Church.  His  first  work  was  to  repair  the  evils  which 
England  had  rndiued  tillhis  accession  by  the  restoration 
of  the  system  of  Henry  the  first ;  and  it  was  with  the  aid 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    165 

and  counsel  of  Theobald  that  the  foreign  marauders  were 
driven  from  the  realm,  the  new  castle  demolished  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  the  baronage,  the  King's  Court  and 
Exchequer  restored.  Age  and  infirmity  however  warned 
the  Primate  to  retire  from  the  post  of  minister,  and  his 
power  fell  into  the  younger  and  more  vigorous  hands  of 
Thomas  Beket,  who  had  long  acted  as  his  confidential 
adviser  and  was  now  made  chancellor.  Thomas  won  the 
personal  favor  of  the  King.  The  two  young  men  had,  in 
Theobald's  words,  "  but  one  heart  and  mind  ; "  Henry 
jested  in  the  Chancellor's  hall,  or  tore  his  cloak  from  his 
shoulders  in  rough  horse-play  as  they  rode  through  the 
streets.  He  loaded  his  favorite  with  riches  and  honors, 
but  there  is  no  ground  for  thinking  that  Thomas  in  any 
degree  influenced  his  system  of  rule.  Henry's  policy 
seems  for  good  or  evil  to  have  been  throughout  his  own. 
His  work  of  reorganization  went  steadily  on  amidst 
troubles  at  home  and  abroad.  Welsh  outbreaks  forced 
him  in  1157  to  lead  an  army  over  the  border  ;  and  a  crush- 
ing repulse  showed  that  he  was  less  skilful  as  a  general 
than  as  a  statesman.  The  next  year  saw  him  drawn  across 
the  Channel,  where  he  was  already  master  of  a  third  of 
the  present  France.  Anjou  and  Touraine  he  had  inherit- 
ed from  his  father,  Maine  and  Normandy  from  his  mother, 
he  governed  Britanny  through  his  brother,  while  the  seven 
provinces  of  the  south,  Poitou,  Saintonge,  Auvergne, 
Perigord,  the  Limousin,  the  Angouniois,  and  Guienne, 
belonged  to  his  wife.  As  Duchess  of  Aquitaine  Eleanor 
had  claims  on  Toulouse,  and  these  Henry  prepared  in 
1159  to  enforce  by  arms.  But  the  campaign  was  turned 
to  the  profit  of  his  reforms.  He  had  already  begun  the 
work  of  bringing  the  baronage  within  the  grasp  of  the 
law  by  sending  judges  from  the  Exchequer  year  after 
year  to  exact  the  royal  dues  and  administer  the  King's 
justice  even  in  castle  and  manor.  He  now  attacked  its 
military  influence.  Each  man  who  held  lands  of  a  certain 
value  was  bound  to  furnish  a  knight  for  his  lord's  service  ; 
and  the  barons  thus  held  a  body  of  trained  soldiers  at 
their  disposal.  When  Henry  called  his  chief  lords  to 
serve  in  the  war  of  Toulouse  he  allowed  the  lower  tenants 


156  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  commute  their  service  for  sums  payable  to  the  royal 
treasury  under  the  name  of  "  scutage,"  or  shield-money. 
The  "  Great  Scutage  "  did  much  to  disarm  the  baronage, 
while  it  enabled  the  King  to  hire  foreign  mercenaries  for 
his  service  abroad.  Again  however  he  was  luckless  in 
war.  King  Louis  of  France  threw  himself  into  Toulouse. 
Conscious  of  the  ill-compacted  nature  of  his  wide  domin- 
ion, Henry  shrank  from  an  open  contest  with  his  suzerain  ; 
he  withdrew  his  forces,  and  the  quarrel  ended  in  1160  by 
a  formal  alliance  and  the  betrothal  of  his  eldest  son  to 
the  daughter  of  Louis. 

Henry  returned  to  his  English  realm  to  regulate  the 
relations  of  the  state  with  the  Church.  These  rested  in 
the  main  on  the  system  established  by  the  Conqueror,  and 
with  that  system  Henry  had  no  wish  to  meddle.  But  he 
was  resolute  that,  baron  or  priest,  all  should  be  equal 
before  the  law  ;  and  he  had  no  more  mercy  for  clerical 
than  for  feudal  immunities.  The  immunities  of  the  clergy 
indeed  were  becoming  a  hindrance  to  public  justice.  The 
clerical  order  in  the  middle  ages  extended  far  beyond  the 
priesthood ;  it  included  in  Henry's  day  the  whole  of  the 
professional  and  educated  classes.  It  was  subject  to 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  church  courts  alone ;  but  bodily 
punishment  could  only  be  inflicted  by  officers  of  the  lay 
courts,  and  so  great  had  the  jealousy  between  clergy  and 
laity  become  that  the  bishops  no  longer  sought  civil  aid 
but  restricted  themselves  to  the  purely  spiritual  punish- 
ments of  penance  and  deprivation  of  orders.  Such 
penalties  formed  no  effectual  check  upon  crime,  and  while 
preserving  the  Church  courts  the  King  aimed  at  the  de- 
livery of  convicted  offenders  to  secular  punishment.  For 
the  carrying  out  of  these  designs  he  sought  an  agent  in 
Thomas  the  Chancellor.  Thomas  had  now  been  his 
minister  for  eight  years,  and  had  fought  bravely  in  the  war 
against  Toulouse  at  the  head  of  the  seven  hundred  knights 
who  formed  his  household.  But  the  King  had  other 
work  for  him  than  war.  On  Theobald's  death  in  1162 
he  forced  on  the  monks  of  Canterbury  his  election  as 
Archbishop.  But  from  the  moment  of  his  appointment 
the  dramatic  temper  of  the  new  Primate  flung  its  whole 


ENGLAND    UNDER   FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    157 

energy  into  the  part  he  set  himself  to  play.  At  the  first 
intimation  of  Henry's  purpose  he  pointed  with  a  laugh  to 
his  gay  court  attire  :  "  You  are  choosing  a  fine  dress,''  he 
said,  l-to  figure  at  the  head  of  your  Canterbury  monks  ;  " 
once  monk  and  Archbishop  he  passed  with  a  fevered 
earnestness  from  luxury  to  asceticism  ;  and  a  visit  to  the 
Council  of  Tours  in  1163,  where  the  highest  doctrines  of 
ecclesiastical  authority  was  sanctioned  by  Pope  Alex- 
ander the  Third,  strengthened  his  purpose  of  struggling 
for  the  privileges  of  the  Church.  His  change  of  attitude 
encouraged  his  old  rivals  at  court  to  vex  him  with  petty 
law-suits,  but  no  breach  had  come  with  the  King  till 
Henry  proposed  that  clerical  convicts  should  be  punish- 
ed by  the  civil  power.  Thomas  refused  ;  he  would  only 
consent  that  a  clerk  once  degraded,  should  for  after  of- 
fences suffer  like  a  layman.  Both  parties  appealed  to 
the  "  customs "  of  the  realm  ;  and  it  was  to  state  these 
"  customs"  that  a  court  was  held  in  1164  at  Clarendon 
near  Marlboro  ugh. 

The  report  presented  by  bishops  and  barons  formed 
the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon,  a  code  which  in  the 
bulk  of  its  provisions  simply  re-enacted  the  sy stem  of  the 
Conqueror.  Every  election  of  bishop  or  abbot  was  to 
take  place  before  royal  officers,  in  the  King's  chapel,  and 
with  the  King's  assent.  The  prelate  elect  was  bound  to 
do  homage  to  the  King  for  his  lands  before  consecration, 
and  to  hold  his  lands  as  a  barony  from  the  King,  subject 
to  all  feudal  burdens  of  taxation  and  attendance  in  the 
King's  court.  No  bishop  might  leave  the  realm  without 
the  royal  permission.  No  tenant  in  chief  or  royal  servant 
might  be  excommunicated,  or  their  land  placed  under 
interdict,  but  by  the  King's  assent.  What  was  new  was 
the  legislation  respecting  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction.  The 
King's  court  was  to  decide  whether  a  suit  between  clerk 
and  layman,  whose  nature  was  disputed,  belonged  to  the 
Church  courts  or  the  King's.  A  royal  officer  was  to  be 
present  at  all  ecclesiastical  proceedings  in  order  to  con- 
fine the  Bishop's  court  within  its  own  due  limits,  and  a 
clerk  convicted  there  passed  at  once  under  the  civil  juris- 
diction. An  appeal  was  left  from  the  Archbishop's  court 


158  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  the  King's  court  for  defect  of  justice,  but  none  might 
appeal  to  the  Papal  court  save  with  the  King's  leave. 
The  privilege  of  sanctuary  in  churches  and  churchyards 
was  repealed,  so  far  as  property  and  not  persons  was 
concerned.  After  a  passionate  refusal  the  Primate  was 
at  last  brought  to  set  his  seal  to  these  Constitutions,  but 
his  assent  was  soon  retracted,  and  Henry's  savage  re- 
sentment threw  the  moral  advantage  of  the  position  into 
his  opponent's  hands.  Vexatious  charges  were  brought 
against  Thomas,  and  he  was  summoned  to  answer  at  a 
Council  held  in  the  autumn  at  Northampton.  All  urged 
him  to  submit ;  his  very  life  was  said  to  be  in  peril  from 
the  King's  wrath.  But  in  the  presence  of  danger  the 
courage  of  the  man  rose  to  its  full  height.  Grasping  his 
archiepiscopal  cross  he  entered  the  royal  court,  forbade 
the  nobles  to  condemn  him,  and  appealed  in  the  teeth  of 
the  Constitutions  to  the  Papal  See.  Shouts  of  "  Traitor  !  " 
followed  him  as  he  withdrew.  The  Primate  turned 
fiercely  at  the  word  :  "  Were  I  a  knight,"  he  shouted 
back,  "  my  sword  should  answer  that  foul  taunt ! ' 
Once  alone  however,  dread  pressed  more  heavily  ;  he 
fled  in  disguise  at  nightfall  and  reached  France  through 
Flanders. 

Great  as  were  the  dangers  it  was  to  bring  with  it,  the 
flight  of  Thomas  left  Henry  free  to  carry  on  the  reforms 
he  had  planned.  In  spite  of  denunciations  from  Primate 
and  Pope,  the  Constitutions  regulated  from  this  time  the 
relations  of  the  Church  with  the  state.  Henry  non- 
turned  to  the  actual  organization  of  the  realm.  His 
reign,  it  has  been  truly  said.  "  initiated  the  rule  of  law  " 
as  distinct  from  the  despotism,  whether  personal  or  tem- 
pered by  routine,  of  the  Norman  sovereigns.  It  was  by 
successive  "  assizes  "  or  codes  issued  with  the  sanction  of 
the  great  councils  of  barons  and  prelates  which  he  sum- 
moned year  by  }rear,  that  he  perfected  in  a  system  of 
gradual  reforms  the  administrative  measures  which  Henry 
the  First  had  begun.  The  fabric  of  our  judicial  legisla- 
tion commences  in  1166  with  the  Assize  of  Clarendon, 
the  first  object  of  which  was  to  provide  for  the  order  of 
the  realm  by  reviving  the  old  English  system  of  mutual 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.       1071 — 1214.    159 

security  or  frankpledge.  No  stranger  might  abide  in  any 
place  save  a  borough  and  only  there  for  a  single  night 
unless  sureties  were  given  for  his  good  behavior ;  and 
the  list  of  such  strangers  was  to  be  submitted  to  the 
itinerant  justices.  In  the  provisions  of  this  assize  for  the 
repression  of  crime  we  find  the  origin  of  trial  by  jury, 
so  often  attributed  to  earlier  times.  Twelve  lawful  men 
of  each  hundred,  with  four  from  each  township,  were 
sworn  to  present  those  who  were  known  or  reputed  as 
criminals  within  their  district  for  trial  by  ordeal.  The 
jurors  were  thus  not  merely  witnesses,  but  sworn  to  act 
as  judges  also  in  determining  the  value  of  the  charge, 
and  it  is  this  double  character  of  Henry's  jurors  that  has 
descended  to  our  "  grand  jury,"  who  still  remain  charged 
with  the  duty  of  presenting  criminals  for  trial  after  ex- 
amination of  the  witnesses  against  them.  Two  later 
steps  brought  the  jury  to  its  modern  condition.  Under 
Edward  the  First  witnesses  acquainted  with  the  partic- 
ular fact  in  question  were  added  in  each  case  to  the 
general  jury,  and  by  the  separation  of  these  tAvo  classes 
of  jurors  at  a  later  time  the  last  became  simply  "  wit- 
nesses "  without  any  judicial  power,  while  the  first  ceased 
to  be  witnesses  at  all  and  became  our  modern  jurors, 
who  are  only  judges  of  the  testimony  given.  With  this 
assize  too  a  practice  which  had  prevailed  from  the  earliest 
English  times,  the  practice  of  '*  compurgation,"  passed 
away.  Under  this  system  the  accused  could  be  acquitted 
of  the  charge  by  the  voluntary  oath  of  his  neighbors  and 
kinsmen  ;  but  this  was  abolished  by  the  Assize  of  Clar- 
endon, and  for  the  fifty  years  which  followed  it  his  trial, 
after  the  investigation  of  the  grand  jury,  was  found  solely 
in  the  ordeal  or  "  judgment  of  God,"  where  innocence 
was  proved  by  the  power  of  holding  hot  iron  in  the  hand 
or  by  sinking  when  flung  into  the  water,  for  swimming 
was  a  proof  of  guilt.  It  Avas  the  abolition  of  the  whole 
system  of  ordeal  by  the  Council  of  Lateran  in  1216  which 
led  the  way  to  the  establishment  of  what  is  called  a 
"  petty  jury"  for  the  final  trial  of  prisoners. 

But  Henry's  work  of  reorganization  had  hardly  begun 
when  it  was  broken  by  the  pressure  of  the  strife  with 


160  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  Primate.  For  six  years  the  contest  raged  bitterly  ; 
at  Rome,  at  Paris,  the  agents  of  the  two  powers  intrigued 
against  each  other.  Henry  stooped  to  acts  of  the  mean- 
est persecution  in  driving  the  Primate's  kinsmen  from 
England,  and  in  confiscating  the  lands  of  their  order  till 
the  monks  of  Pontigny  should  refuse  Thomas  a  home; 
while  Beket  himself  exhausted  the  patience  of  his  friends 
by  his  violence  and  excommunications,  as  well  as  by  the 
stubbornness  with  which  he  clung  to  the  offensive  clause 
"  Saving  the  honor  of  my  order,"  the  addition  of  which 
to  his  consent  would  have  practically  neutralized  the 
King's  reforms.  The  Pope  counselled  mildness,  the 
French  king  for  a  time  withdrew  his  support,  his  own 
clerks  gave  way  at  last.  "  Come  up,"  said  one  of  them 
bitterly  when  his  horse  stumbled  on  the  road,  "  saving 
the  honor  of  the  Church  and  my  order."  But  neither 
warning  nor  desertion  moved  the  resolution  of  the  Pri- 
mate. Henry,  in  dread  of  Papal  excommunication,  re- 
solved in  1170  on  the  coronation  of  his  son :  and  this 
office,  which  belonged  to  the  see  of  Canterbury,  he  trans- 
ferred to  the  Archbishop  of  York.  But  the  Pope's  hands 
were  now  freed  by  his  successes  in  Italy,  and  the  threat 
of  an  interdict  forced  the  King  to  a  show  of  submission. 
The  Archbishop  was  allowed  to  return  after  a  reconcilia- 
tion with  the  King  at  Freteval,  and  the  Kentishmen 
flocked  around  him  with  uproarious  welcome  as  he  en- 
tered Canterbury.  "  This  is  England  "  said  his  clerks, 
as  they  saw  the  white  headlands  of  the  coast.  "  You 
will  wish  yourself  elsewhere  before  fifty  days  are  gone," 
said  Thomas  sadly,  and  his  foreboding  showed  his  ap- 
preciation of  Henry's  character.  He  was  now  in  the 
royal  power,  and  orders  had  already  been  issued  in  the 
younger  Henry's  name  for  his  arrest  when  four  knights 
from  the  King's  court,  spurred  to  outrage  by  a  passionate 
outburst  of  their  master's  wrath,  crossed  the  sea,  and  on 
the  29th  of  December  forced  their  way  into  the  Arch- 
bishop's palace.  After  a  stormy  parley  with  him  in  his 
chamber  they  withdrew  to  arm.  Thomas  was  hurried  by 
his  clerks  into  the  cathedral,  but  as  he  reached  the  steps 
leading  from  the  transept  to  the  choir  his  pursuers  burst 


ENGLAND   UNDER    FOREIGN  KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    161 

in  from  the  cloisters.  "  Where,"  cried  Reginald  Fitzurse 
in  the  dusk  of  the  dimly  lighted  minster,  "where  is  the 
traitor,  Thomas  Beket?"  The  Primate  turned  resolutely 
back :  "  Here  am  I,  no  traitor,  but  a  priest  of  God,"  he 
replied,  and  again  descending  the  steps  he  placed  him- 
self with  his  back  against  a  pillar  and  fronted  his  foes. 
All  the  bravery  and  violence  of  his  old  knightly  life 
seemed  to  revive  in  Thomas  as  he  tossed  back  the  threats 
and  demands  of  his  assailants.  "  You  are  our  prisoner," 
shouted  Fitzurse,  and  the  four  knights  seized  him  to  drag 
him  from  the  church.  "  Do  not  touch  me,  Reginald," 
cried  the  Primate,  "  pander  that  you  are,  }^ou  owe  me 
fealty; "  and  availing  himself  of  his  personal  strength  he 
shook  him  roughly  off.  "  Strike,  strike,"  retorted  Fitz- 
urse, and  blow  after  blow  struck  Thomas  to  the  ground. 
A  retainer  of  Ranulf  de  Broc  with  the  point  of  his  sword 
scattered  the  Primate's  brains  on  the  ground.  "  Let  us 
be  off,"  he  cried  triumphantly,  "  this  traitor  will  never 
rise  again." 

The  brutal  murder  was  received  with  a  thrill  of 
horror  throughout  Christendom  ;  miracles  were  wrought 
at  the  martyr's  tomb  ;  he  was  canonized  and  became  the 
most  popular  of  English  saints.  The  stately  "martyr- 
dom "  which  rose  over  his  relics  at  Canterbury  seemed 
to  embody  the  triumph  which  his  blood  had  won.  But 
the  contest  had  in  fact  revealed  a  new  current  of 
educated  opinion  which  Avas  to  be  more  fatal  to  the 
Church  than  the  reforms  of  the  King.  Throughout  it 
Henry  had  been  aided  by  a  silent  revolution  which  now 
began  to  part  the  purely  literary  class  from  the  purely 
clerical.  During  the  earlier  ages  of  our  history  we  have 
seen  literature  springing  up  in  ecclesiastical  schools,  and 
protecting  itself  against  the  ignorance  and  violence  of 
the  time  under  ecclesiastical  privileges.  Almost  all  our 
writers  from  Beeda  to  the  days  of  the  Angevins  are 
clergy  or  monks.  The  revival  of  letters  which  followed 
the  Conquest  was  a  purely  ecclesiastical  revival ;  the 
intellectual  impulse  which  Bee  had  given  to  Normandy 
travelled  across  the  Channel  with  the  new  Norman 
abbots  who  were  established  in  the  greater  English  mon- 

xi 


162  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

asteries  ;  and  writing-rooms  or  scriptoria,  where  the  chief 
works  of  Latin  literature,  patristic  or  classical,  were 
copied  and  illuminated,  the  lives  of  saints  compiled,  and 
entries  noted  in  the  monastic  chronicle,  formed  from  this 
time  a  part  of  every  religious  house  of  any  importance. 
But  the  literature  which  found  this  religious  shelter  was 
not  so  much  ecclesiastical  as  secular.  Even  the  philo- 
sophical and  devotional  impulse  given  by  Anselm  pro- 
duced no  English  work  of  theology  or  metaphysics. 
The  literary  revival  which  followed  the  Conquest  took 
mainly  the  historical  form.  At  Durham  Turgot  and 
Simeon  threw  into  Latin  shape  the  national  annals  to 
the  time  of  Henry  the  First  with  an  especial  regard  to 
northern  affairs,  while  the  earlier  events  of  Stephen's 
reign  were  noted  down  by  two  Priors  of  Hexham  in  the 
wild  border-land  between  England  and  the  Scots. 

These  however  were  the  colorless  jottings  of  mere 
annalists ;  it  was  in  the  Scriptorium  of  Canterbury,  in 
Osbern's  lives  of  the  English  saints  or  in  Eadmer's  record 
of  the  struggle  of  Anselm  against  the  Red  King  and  his 
successor  that  we  see  the  first  indications  of  a  dis- 
tinctively English  feeling  telling  on  the  new  liter- 
ature. The  national  impulse  is  yet  more  conspicuous  in 
the  two  historians  that  followed.  The  war-songs  of  the 
English  conquerors  of  Britain  were  preserved  by  Henry, 
an  Archdeacon  of  Huntingdon,  who  wove  them  into  an- 
nals compiled  from  Baeda  and  the  Chronicle ;  while 
William,  the  librarian  of  Malmesbury,  as  industriously 
collected  the  lighter  ballads  which  embodied  the  popular 
traditions  of  the  English  Kings.  It  is  in  William  above 
all  others  that  we  see  the  new  tendency  of  English 
literature.  In  himself,  as  in  his  work,  he  marks  the 
fusion  of  the  conquerors  and  the  conquered,  for  he  was 
of  both  English  and  Norman  parentage  and  his  sympathies 
were  as  divided  as  his  blood.  The  form  and  style  of  his 
writings  show  the  influence  of  those  classical  studies 
which  were  now  reviving  throughout  Christendom. 
Monk  as  he  is,  William  discards  the  older  ecclesiastical 
models  and  the  annalistic  form.  Events  are  grouped 
together  with  no  strict  reference  to  time,  while  the  lively 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    163 

narrative  flows  rapidly  and  loosely  along  with  constant 
breaks  of  digression  over  the  general  history  of  Europe 
and  the  Church.  It  is  in  this  change  of  historic  spirit 
that  William  takes  his  place  as  first  of  the  more  states- 
manlike and  philosophic  school  of  historians  who  began 
to  arise  in  direct  connexion  with  the  Court,  and  among 
whom  the  author  of  the  chronicle  which  commonly  bears 
the  name  of  "  Benedict  of  Peterborough  "  with  his  con- 
tinuator  Roger  of  Howden  are  the  most  conspicuous. 
Both  held  judicial  offices  under  Henry  the  Second,  and 
it  is  to  their  position  at  Court  that  they  owe  the  fulness 
and  accuracy  of  their  information  as  to  affairs  at  home 
and  abroad,  as  well  as  their  copious  supply  of  official 
documents.  What  is  noteworthy  in  these  writers  is  the 
purely  political  temper  with  which  they  regard  the  con- 
flict of  Church  and  State  in  their  time.  But  the  English 
court  had  now  become  the  centre  of  a  distinctly  secular 
literature.  The  treatise  of  Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  a  justiciar 
of  Henry  the  Second,  is  the  earliest  work  on  English 
law,  as  that  of  the  royal  treasurer,  Richard  Fitz-Neal,  on 
the  Exchequer  is  the  earliest  on  English  government. 

Still  more  distinctly  secular  than  these,  though  the 
work  of  a  priest  who  claimed  to  be  a  bishop,  are  the 
writings  of  Gerald  de  Barri.  Gerald  is  the  father  of  our' 
popular  literature  as  he  is  the  originator  of  the  political 
and  ecclesiastical  pamphlet.  Welsh  blood  (as  his  usual 
name  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis  implies)  mixed  with  Nor- 
man in  his  veins,  and  something  of  the  restless  Celtic  fire 
runs  alike  through  his  writings  and  his  life.  A  busy 
scholar  at  Paris,  a  reforming  Archdeacon  in  Wales,  the 
wittiest  of  Court  chaplains,  the  most  troublesome  of 
bishops,  Gerald  became  the  gayest  and  most  amusing  of 
all  the  authors  of  his  time.  In  his  hands  the  stately 
Latin  tongue  took  the  vivacity  and  picturesqueuess  of 
the  jongleur's  verse.  Reared  as  he  had  been  in  classic 
studies,  he  threw  pedantry  contemptuously  aside.  "  It 
is  better  to  be  dumb  than  not  to  be  understood,"  is  his 
characteristic  apology  for  the  novelty  of  his  style  :  "  new 
times  require  new  fashions,  and  so  I  have  thrown  utterly 
aside  the  old  and  dry  method  of  some  authors  and  aimed 


164  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

at  adopting  the  fashion  of  speech  which  is  actually  in 
vogue  to-day."  His  tract  on  the  conquest  of  Ireland 
and  his  account  of  Wales,  which  are  in  fact  reports  of 
two  journeys  undertaken  in  those  countries  with  John 
and  Archbishop  Baldwin,  illustrate  his  rapid  faculty  of 
careless  observation,  his  audacity,  and  his  good  sense. 
They  are  just  the  sort  of  lively,  dashing  letters  that  we 
find  in  the  correspondence  of  a  modern  journal.  There 
is  the  same  modern  tone  in  his  political  pamphlets  ;  his 
profusion  of  jests,  his  fund  of  anecdote,  the  aptness  of 
his  quotations,  his  natural  shrewdness  and  critical 
acumen,  the  clearness  and  vivacity  of  his  style,  are 
backed  by  a  fearlessness  and  impetuosity  that  made  him 
a  dangerous  assailant  even  to  such  a  ruler  as  Henry  the 
Second.  The  invectives  in  which  Gerald  poured  out 
his  resentment  against  the  Angevins  are  the  cause  of 
half  the  scandal  about  Henry  and  his  sons  which  has 
found  its  way  into  history.  His  life  was  wasted  in  an 
ineffectual  attempt  to  secure-  the  see  of  St.  David's,  but 
his  pungent  pen  played  its  part  in  rousing  the  nation  to 
its  later  struggle  with  the  Crown. 

A  tone  of  distinct  hostility  to  the  Church  developed 
itself  almost  from  the  first  among  the  singers  of  romance. 
Romance  had  long  before  taken  root  in  the  court  of  Henry 
the  First,  where  under  the  patronage  of  Queen  Maud  the 
dreams  of  Arthur,  so  long  cherished  by  the  Celts  of  Brit- 
annjs  and  which  had  travelled  to  Wales  in  the  train  of  the 
exile  Rhys  ap  Tewdor,  took  shape  in  the  History  of  the 
Britons  by  Geoffry  of  Monmouth.  Myth,  legend,  tradition, 
the  classical  pedantry  of  the  day,  Welsh  hopes  of  future 
triumph  over  the  Saxon,  the  memories  of  the  Crusades 
and  of  the  world-wide  dominion  of  Charles  the  Great, 
were  mingled  together  by  this  daring  fabulist  in  a  work 
whose  popularity  became  at  once  immense.  Alfred  of 
Beverly  transferred  Geoffry's  inventions  into  the  region 
of  sober  history,  while  two  Norman  trouveurs,  Gaimar  and 
Wace,  translated  them  into  French  verse.  So  complete 
was  the  credence  they  obtained  that  Arthur's  tomb 
at  Glastonbury  was  visited  by  Henry  the  Second  while 
the  child  of  his  son  Geoffry  and  of  Constance  of 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN  KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    165 

Britanny  received  the  name  of  the  Celtic  hero.  Out 
of  Geoffry's  creation  grew  little  by  little  the  poem  of  the 
Table  Round.  Britanny,  which  had  mingled  with  the  story 
of  Arthur  the  older  and  more  mysterious  legend  of  the 
Enchanter  Merlin,  lent  that  of  Lancelot  to  the  wandering 
minstrels  of  the  day,  who  moulded  it  as  they  wandered 
from  hall  to  hall  into  the  familiar  tale  of  knighthood 
wrested  from  its  loyalty  by  the  love  of  woman.  The 
stories  of  Tristram  and  Gawayne,  at  first  as  independent 
as  that  of  Lancelot,  were  drawn  with  it  into  the  whirlpool 
of  Arthurian  romance  ;  and  when  the  Church,  jealous  of 
the  popularity  of  the  legends  of  chivalry,  invented  as  a 
counteracting  influence  the  poem  of  the  Sacred  Dish,  the 
San  Graal  which  held  the  blood  of  the  Cross  invisible  to 
all  eyes  but  those  of  the  pure  in  heart,  the  genius  of  a 
Court  poet,  Walter  de  Map,  wove  the  rival  legends  to- 
gether, sent  Arthur  and  his  knights  wandering  over  sea 
and  land  in  quest  of  the  San  Graal,  and  crowned  the  work 
by*the  figure  of  Sir  Galahad,  the  type  of  ideal  knighthood, 
without  fear  and  without  reproach. 

Walter  stands  before  us  as  the  representative  of  a 
sudden  outburst  of  literary,  social,  and  religious  criticism 
which  followed  this  growth  of  romance  and  the  appear- 
ance of  a  freer  historical  tone  in  the  court  of  the  two 
Henries.  Born  on  the  Welsh  border,  a  student  at  Paris, 
a  favorite  with  the  King,  a  royal  chaplain,  justiciary,  and 
ambassador,  his  genius  was  as  various  as  it  was  prolific. 
He  is  as  much  at  his  ease  in  sweeping  together  the  chit- 
chat of  the  time  in  his  "  Courtly  Trifles  "  as  in  creating 
the  character  of  Sir  Galahad.  But  he  only  rose  to  his 
fullest  strength  when  he  turned  from  the  fields  of  romance 
to  that  of  Church  reform  and  embodied  the  ecclesiastical 
abuses  of  his  day  in  the  figure  of  his  "  Bishop  Goliath." 
The  whole  spirit  of  Henry  and  his  Court  in  their  struggle 
with  Thomas  is  reflected  and  illustrated  in  the  apocalypse 
and  confession  of  this  imaginary  prelate.  Picture  after 
picture  strips  the  veil  from  the  corruption  of  the  medi- 
aeval Church,  its  indolence,  its  thirst  for  gain,  its  secret 
immorality.  The  whole  body  of  the  clergy  from  Pope  to 
hedge-priest  is  painted  as  busy  in  the  chase  for  gain ; 


166  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

what  escapes  the  bishop  is  snapped  u-p  by  the  archdeacon, 
what  escapes  the  archdeacon  is  nosed  and  hunted  down 
by  the  dean,  while  a  host  of  minor  officials  prowl  hun- 
grily around  these  greater  marauders.  Out  of  the  crowd 
of  figures  which  fills  the  canvas  of  the  satirist,  pluralist 
vicars,  abbots  "  purple  as  their  wines,"  monks  feeding  and 
chattering  together  like  parrots  in  the  refectory,  rises  the 
Philistine  Bishop,  light  of  purpose,  void  of  conscience, 
lost  in  sensuality,  drunken,  unchaste,  the  Goliath  who 
sums  up  the  enormities  of  all,  and  against  whose  forehead 
this  new  David  slings  his  sharp  pebble  of  the  brook. 

It  would  be  in  the  highest  degree  unjust  to  treat  such 
invectives  as  sober  history,  or  to  judge  the  Church  of  the 
twelfth  century  by  the  taunts  of  Walter  de  Map.  What 
writings  such  as  his  bring  home  to  us  is  the  upgrowth  of 
a  new  literary  class,  not  only  standing  apart  from  the 
Church  but  regarding  it  with  a  hardly  disguised  ill-will, 
and  breaking  down  the  unquestioning  reverence  with 
which  men  had  till  now  regarded  it  by  their  sarcasm  an*d 
abuse.  The  tone  of  intellectual  contempt  which  begins 
with  Walter  de  Map  goes  deepening  on  till  it  culminates 
in  Chaucer  and  passes  into  the  open  revolt  of  the  Lollard. 
But  even  in  these  early  days  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  it 
gave  Henry  strength  in  his  contest  with  the  Church.  So 
little  indeed  did  he  suffer  from  the  murder  of  Archbishop 
Thomas  that  the  years  which  follow  it  form  the  grandest 
portion  of  his  reign.  While  Rome  was  threatening  excom- 
munication he  added  a  new  realm  to  his  dominions. 
Ireland  had  long  since  fallen  from  the  civilization  and 
learning  which  its  missionaries  brought  in  the  seventh 
century  to  the  shores  of  Northumbria.  Every  element  of 
improvement  or  progress  which  had  been  introduced  into 
the  island  disappeared  in  the  long  and  desperate  struggle 
with  the  Danes.  The  coast-towns  which  the  invaders 
founded,  such  as  Dublin  or  Waterford,  remained  Danish 
in  blood  and  manners  and  at  feud  with  the  Celtic  tribes 
around  them,  though  sometimes  forced  by  the  fortunes 
of  war  to  pay  tribute  and  to  accept  the  over-lordship  of 
the  Irish  Kings.  It  was  through  these  towns  however 
that  the  intercourse  with  England  which  had  ceased  since 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    167 

the  eighth  century  was  to  some  extent  renewed  in  the 
eleventh.  Cut  off  from  the  Church  of  the  island  by  na- 
tional antipathy,  the  Danish  coast-cities  applied  to  the  See 
of  Canterbury  for  the  ordination  of  their  bishops,  and 
acknowledged  a  right  of  spiritual  supervision  in  Lanfranc 
and  Anselm.  The  relations  thus  formed  were  drawn 
closer  by  a  slave-trade  between  the  two  countries  which 
the  Conqueror  and  Bishop  Wulfstan  succeeded  for  a  time 
in  suppressing  at  Bristol  but  which  appears  to  have 
quickly  revived.  At  the  time  of  Henry  the  Second's  ac- 
cession Ireland  was  full  of  Englishmen  who  had  been 
kidnapped  and  sold  into  slavery  in  spite  of  royal  pro- 
hibitions and  the  spiritual  menaces  of  the  English  Church. 
The  slave-trade  afforded  a  legitimate  pretext  for  war,  had 
a  pretext  been  needed  by  the  ambition  of  Henry  the 
Second  ;  and  within  a  few  months  of  that  king's  corona- 
tion John  of  Salisbury  was  despatched  to  obtain  the 
Papal  sanction  for  an  invasion  of  the  island.  The  enter- 
prise, as  it  was  laid  before  Pope  Hadrian  IV.,  took  the 
color  of  a  crusade.  The  isolation  of  Ireland  from  the 
general  body  of  Christendom,  the  absence  of  learning 
and  civilization,  the  scandalous  vices  of  its  people,  were 
alleged  as  the  grounds  of  Henry's  action.  It  was  the 
general  belief  of  the  time  that  all  islands  fell  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Papal  See,  and  it  was  as  a  possession  of 
the  Roman  Church  that  Henry  sought  Hadrian's  permis- 
sion to  enter  Ireland.  His  aim  was  to  enlarge  the  bounds 
of  the  Church,  to  restrain  the  progress  of  vices,  to  cor- 
rect the  manners  of  its  people  and  to  plant  virtue  among 
them,  and  to  increase  the  Christian  religion."  He 
engaged  to  "  subject  the  people  to  laws,  extirpate  vicious 
customs,  to  respect  the  rights  of  the  native  Churches,  and 
to  enforce  the  paj^ment  of  Peter's  pence  "  as  a  recognition 
of  the  over-lordship  of  the  Roman  See.  Hadrian  by  his 
bull  approved  the  enterprise  as  one  prompted  by  "  the 
ardor  of  faith  and  love  of  religion,"  and  declared  his 
will  that  the  people  of  Ireland  should  receive  Henry 
with  all  honor,  and  revere  him  as  their  lord. 

The  Papal  bull  was  produced  in  a  great  council  of  the 
English  baronage,  but  the  opposition  was  strong  enough 


168  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  force  on  Henry  a  temporary  abandonment  of  his  de- 
signs, and  fourteen  years  passed  before  the  scheme  was 
brought  to  life  again  by  the  flight  of  Dermod,  King  of 
Leinster,  to  Henry's  court.  Dermod  had  been  driven 
from  his  dominions  in  one  of  the  endless  civil  wars  which 
devastated  the  island  ;  he  now  did  homage  for  his  king- 
dom to  Henry,  and  returned  to  Ireland  with  promises  of 
aid  from  the  English  knighthood.  He  was  followed  in 
1169  by  Robert  FitzStephen,  a  son  of  the  Constable  of 
Cardigan,  with  a  little  band  of  a  hundred  and  forty 
knights,  sixty  men-at-arms,  and  three  or  four  hundred 
Welsh  archers.  Small  as  was  the  number  of  the  adven- 
turers, their  horses  and  arms  proved  irresistible  by  the 
Irish  kernes ;  a  sally  of  the  men  of  Wexford  was  avenged 
by  the  storm  of  their  town ;  the  Ossory  clans  were  de- 
feated with  a  terrible  slaughter,  and  Dermod,  seizing  a 
head  from  the  heap  of  trophies  which  his  men  piled  at 
his  feet,  tore  off  in  savage  triumph  its  nose  and  lips  with 
his  teeth.  The  arrival  of  fresh  forces  heralded  the  coming 
of  Richard  of  Clare,  Earl  of  Pembroke  and  Striguil,  a 
ruined  baron  who  bore  the  nickname  of  Strongbow,  and 
who  in  defiance  of  Henry's  prohibition  landed  near  Water- 
ford  with  a  force  of  fifteen  hundred  men  as  Dermod's 
mercenary.  The  city  was  at  once  stormed,  and  the 
united  forces  of  the  Earl  and  King  marched  to  the  siege 
of  Dublin.  In  spite  of  a  relief  attempted  by  the  King  of 
Connaught,  who  was  recognized  as  overking  of  the  isl- 
and by  the  rest  of  the  tribes,  Dublin  was  taken  by  sur- 
prise ;  and  the  marriage  of  Richard  with  Eva,  Dermod's 
daughter,  left  the  Earl  on  the  death  of  his  father-in-law 
which  followed  quickly  on  these  successes  master  of  his 
kingdom  of  Leinster.  The  new  lord  had  soon  however 
to  hurry  back  to  England  and  appease  the  jealousy  of 
Henry  by  the  surrender  of  Dublin  to  the  Crown,  by  doing 
homage  for  Leinster  as  an  English  lordship,  and  by  ac- 
companying the  King  in  1171  on  a  voyage  to  the  new 
dominion  which  the  adventurers  had  won. 

Had  fate  suffered  Henry  to  carry  out  his  purpose,  the 
conquest  of  Ireland  would  now  have  been  accomplished. 
The  King  of  Connaught  indeed  and  the  chiefs  of  Ulster 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    169 

refused  him  homage,  but  the  rest  of  the  Irish  tribes  owned 
his  suzerainty  ;  the  bishops  in  synod  at  Cashel  recognized 
him  as  their  lord ;  and  he  was  preparing  to  penetrate  to 
the  north  and  west,  and  to  secure  his  conquest  by  a 
systematic  erection  of  castles  throughout  the  country, 
when  the  need  of  making  terms  with  Rome,  whose  inter- 
dict threatened  to  avenge  the  murder  of  Archbishop 
Thomas,  recalled  him  in  the  spring  of  1172  to  Normandy. 
Henry  averted  the  threatened  sentence  by  a  show  of 
submission.  The  judicial  provisions  in  the  Constitutions 
of  Clarendon  were  in  form  annulled,  and  liberty  of  elec- 
tion was  restored  in  the  case  of  bishoprics  and  abbacies. 
In  reality  however  the  victory  rested  with  the  King. 
Throughout  his  reign  ecclesiastical  appointments  re- 
mained practically  in  his  hands  and  the  King's  Court 
asserted  its  power  over  the  spiritual  jurisdiction  of  the 
bishops.  But  the  strife  with  Thomas  had  roused  into 
active  life  every  element  of  danger  which  surrounded 
Henry,  the  envious  dread  of  his  neighbors,  the  disaffec- 
tion of  his  own  house,  the  disgust  of  the  barons  at  the 
repeated  blows  which  he  levelled  at  their  military  and 
judicial  power.  The  King's  withdrawal  of  the  office  of 
sheriff  from  the  great  nobles  of  the  shire  to  entrust  it  to 
the  lawyers  and  courtiers  who  already  furnished  the  staff 
of  the  royal  judges  quickened  the  resentment  of  the  bar- 
onage into  revolt.  His  wife  Eleanor,  now  parted  from 
Henry  by  a  bitter  hate,  spurred  her  eldest  son,  whose 
coronation  had  given  him  the  title  of  king,  to  demand 
possession  of  the  English  realm.  On  his  father's  refusal 
the  boy  sought  refuge  with  Louis  of  France,  and  his 
flight  was  the  signal  for  a  vast  rising.  France,  Flanders, 
and  Scotland  joined  in  league  against  Henry  ;  his  younger 
sons,  Richard  and  Geoffry,  took  up  arms  in  Aquitaine, 
while  the  Earl  of  Leicester  sailed  from  Flanders  with  an 
army  of  mercenaries  to  stir  up  England  to  revolt.  The 
Earl's  descent  ended  in  a  crushing  defeat  near  St.  Ed- 
mundsbury  at  the  hands  of  the  King's  justiciars  ;  but  no 
sooner  had  the  French  king  entered  Normandy  and  in- 
vested Rouen  than  the  revolt  of  the  baronage  burst  into 
flames.  The  Scots  crossed  the  border,  Roger  Mowbray 


170  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

rose  in  Yorkshire,  Ferrars,  Earl  of  Derby,  in  the  mid- 
land shires,  Hugh  Bigod  in  the  eastern  counties,  while  a 
Flemish  fleet  prepared  to  support  the  insurrection  by  a 
descent  upon  the  coast.  The  murder  of  Archbishop 
Thomas  still  hung  round  Henry's  neck,  and  his  first  act 
in  hurrying  to  England  to  meet  these  perils  in  1174  was 
to  prostrate  himself  before  the  shrine  of  the  new  martyr 
and  to  submit  to  a  public  scourging  in  expiation  of  his 
sin.  But  the  penance  was  hardly  wrought  when  all  dan- 

fer  was  dispelled  by  a  series  of  triumphs.  The  King  of 
cotland,  William  the  Lion,  surprised  by  the  English 
under  cover  of  a  mist,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  justiciary 
Ranulf  de  Glanvill,  and  at  the  retreat  of  the  Scots  the 
English  rebels  hastened  to  lay  down  their  arms.  With 
the  army  of  mercenaries  which  he  had  brought  over  sea 
Henry  was  able  to  return  to  Normandy,  to  raise  the  siege 
of  Rouen,  and  to  reduce  his  sons  to  submission. 

Through  the  next  ten  years  Henry's  power  was  at  its 
height.  The  French  King  was  cowed.  The  Scotch 
King  bought  his  release  in  1175  by  owning  Henry's 
suzerainty.  The  Scotch  barons  did  homage,  and  Eng- 
lish garrisons  manned  the  strongest  of  the  Scotch  cas- 
tles. In  England  itself  church  and  baronage  were  alike 
at  the  King's  mercy.  Eleanor  was  imprisoned  :  and  the 
younger  Henry,  though  always  troublesome,  remained 
powerless  to  do  harm.  The  King  availed  himself  of  this 
rest  from  outer  foes  to  push  forward  his  judicial  and  ad- 
ministrative organization.  At  the  outset  of  his  reign  he 
had  restored  the  King's  court  and  the  occasional  circuits 
of  its  justices ;  but  the  revolt  was  hardly  over  when  in 
in  1176  the  Assize  of  Northampton  rendered  this  insti- 
tution permanent  and  regular  by  dividing  the  kingdom 
into  six  districts,  to  each  of  which  three  itinerant  judges 
were  assigned.  The  circuits  thus  marked  out  corre- 
spond roughly  with  those  that  still  exist.  The  primary 
object  of  these  circuits  was  financial ;  but  the  rendering 
of  the  King's  justice  went  on  side  by  side  with  the  exac- 
tion of  the  King's  dues,  and  this  carrying  of  justice  to 
every  corner  of  the  realm  was  made  still  more  effective 
by  the  abolition  of  all  feudal  exemptions  from  the  royal 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN    KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    171 

jurisdiction.  The  chief  danger  of  the  new  system  la}*ln 
the  opportunities  it  afforded  to  judicial  corruption  ;  and 
so  great  were  its  abuses,  that  in  1178  Henry  was  forced 
to  restrict  for  a  while  the  number  of  justices  to  five,  and 
to  reserve  appeals  from  their  court  to  himself  in  council. 
The  Court  of  Appeal  which  was  thus  created,  that  of  the 
King  in  Council,  gave  birth  as  time  went  on  to  tribunal 
after  tribunal.  It  is  from  it  that  the  judicial  powers  now 
exercised  by  the  Privy  Council  are  derived,  as  well  as 
the  equitable  jurisdiction  of  the  Chancellor.  In  the 
next  century  it  became  the  Great  Council  of  the  realm, 
and  it  is  from  this  Great  Council,  in  its  two  distinct 
capacities,  that  the  Privy  Council  drew  its  legislative, 
and  the  House  of  Lords  its  judicial  character.  The 
Court  of  Star  Chamber  and  the  Judicial  Committee  of 
the  Privy  Council  are  later  offshoots  of  Henry's  Court  of 
Appeal.  From  the  judicial  organization  of  the  realm,  he 
turned  to  its  military  organization,  and  in  1181  an  Assize 
of  Arms  restored  the  national  fyrd  or  militia  to  the  place 
which  it  had  lost  at  the  Conquest.  The  substitution  of 
scutage  for  military  service  had  freed  the  crown  from  its 
dependence  on  the  baronage  and  its  feudal  retainers , 
the  Assize  of  Arms  replaced  this  feudal  organization  by 
the  older  obligation  of  every  freeman  to  serve  in  defence 
of  the  realm.  Every  knight  was  now  bound  to  appear 
in  coat  of  mail  and  with  shield  and  lance,  ever}'  free- 
holder with  lance  and  hauberk,  every  burgess  and  poorer 
freeman  with  lance  and  helmet,  at  the  King's  call.  The 
levy  of  an  armed  nation  was  thus  placed  wholly  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Crown  for  purposes  of  defence. 

A  fresh  revolt  of  the  younger  Henry  with  his  brother 
Geoffry  in  1183  hardly  broke  the  current  of  Henry's 
success.  The  revolt  ended  with  the  young  King's  death, 
and  in  1186  this  was  followed  by  the  death  of  Geoffry. 
Richard,  now  his  father's  heir,  remained  busy  in  Aqui- 
taine ;  and  Henry  was  himself  occupied  with  plans  for 
the  recovery  of  Jerusalem,  which  had  been  taken  by 
Saladin  in  1187.  The  "  Saladiu  tithe,"  a  tax  levied  on 
all  goods  and  chattels,  and  memorable  as  the  first  English 
instance  of  taxation  on  personal  property,  was  granted 


172  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  tlie  King  at  the  opening  of  1188  to  support  his  intended 
Crusade.  But  the  Crusade  was  hindered  by  strife  which 
broke  out  between  Richard  and  the  new  French  King, 
Philip;  and  while  Henry  strove  in  vain  to  bring  about 
peace,  a  suspicion  that  he  purposed  to  make  his  youngest 
son,  John,  his  heir  drove  Richard  to  Philip's  side.  His 
father,  broken  in  health  and  spirits,  negotiated  fruitlessly 
through  the  winter,  but  with  the  spring  of  1189  Richard 
and  the  French  King  suddenly  appeared  before  Le  Mans. 
Henry  was  driven  in  headlong  flight  from  the  town.  Tra- 
dition tells  how  from  a  height  where  he  halted  to  look 
back  on  the  burning  city,  so  dear  to  him  as  his  birthplace, 
the  King  hurled  his  curse  against  Qod  :  "  Since  Thou 
hast  taken  from  me  the  town  I  loved  best,  where  I  was 
born  and  bred,  and  where  my  father  lies  buried,  I  will 
have  my  revenge  on  Thee  too — I  will  rob  Thee  of  that 
thing  Thou  lovest  most  in  me."  If  the  words  were  ut- 
tered, they  were  the  frenzied  words  of  a  dying  man. 
Death  drew  Henry  to  the  home  of  his  race,  but  Tours 
fell  as  he  lay  at  Saumur,  and  the  hunted  King  was  driven 
to  beg  mercy  from  his  foes.  They  gave  him  the  list  of 
the  conspirators  against  him  :  at  its  head  was  the  name 
of  one,  his  love  for  whom  had  brought  with  it  the  ruin 
that  was  crushing  him,  his  youngest  son,  John.  "  Now," 
he  said,  as  he  turned  his  face  to  the  wall,  "  let  things  go 
as  they  will — I  care  no  more  for  myself  or  for  the  world." 
The  end  was  come  at  last.  Henry  was  borne  to  Chinon 
by  the  silvery  waters  of  Vienne,  and  muttering,  "  Shame, 
shame  on  a  conquered  King,  passed  sullenly  away. 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.       1071 1214.    178 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE     ANGEVIN     KINGS. 

1189—1204. 

THE  fall  of  Henry  the  Second  only  showed  the 
strength  of  the  system  he  had  built  up  on  this  side  the 
sea.  In  the  hands  of  the  Justiciar,  Ranulf  de  Glanvill, 
England  remained  peaceful  through  the  last  stormy 
months  of  his  reign,  and  his  successor  Richard  found  it 
undisturbed  when  he  came  for  his  crowning  in  the 
autumn  of  1189.  Though  born  at  Oxford,  Richard  had 
been  bred  in  Aquitaine  ;  he  was  an  utter  stranger  to  his 
realm,  and  his  visit  was  simply  for  the  purpose  of  gather- 
ing money  for  a  Crusade.  Sheriffdoms,  bishoprics,  were 
sold  ;  even  the  supremacy  over  Scotland  was  bought 
back  again  by  William  the  Lion  ;  and  it  was  with  the 
wealth  which  these  measures  won  that  Richard  made  his 
way  in  1190  to  Marseilles  and  sailed  thence  to  Messina. 
Here  he  found  his  army  and  a  host  under  King  Philip  of 
France  ;  and  the  winter  was  spent  in  quarrels  between 
the  two  Kings  and  a  strife  between  Richard  and  Tancred 
of  Sicily.  In  the  spring  of  1191  his  mother  Eleanor  ar- 
rived with  ill  news  from  England.  Richard  had  left  the 
realm  under  the  regency  of  two  bishops,  Hugh  Puiset  of 
Durham  and  William  Longchamp  of  Ely ;  but  before 
quitting  France  he  had  entrusted  it  wholly  to  the  latter, 
who  stood  at  the  head  of  Church  and  State  as  at  once 
Justiciar  and  Papal  Legate.  Longchamp  was  loyal  to 
the  King,  but  his  exactions  and  scorn  of  Englishmen 
roused  a  fierce  hatred  among  the  baronage,  and  this  hatred 


174  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

found  a  head  in  John.  While  richly  gifting  his  brother 
with  earldoms  and  lands,  Richard  had  taken  oath  from 
him  that  he  would  quit  England  for  three  years.  But 
tidings  that  the  Justiciar  was  striving  to  secure  the  suc- 
cession of  Arthur,  the  child  of  his  elder  brother  Geoifry 
and  of  Constance  of  Britanny,  to  the  English  crown  at 
once  recalled  John  to  the  realm,  and  peace  between  him 
and  Longchamp  was  only  preserved  by  the  influence  of 
the  queen-mother  Eleanor.  Richard  met  these  news  by 
sending  William  of  Coutances,  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen, 
with  full  but  secret  powers  to  England.  On  his  landing 
in  the  summer  of  1191  William  found  the  country  already 
in  arms.  No  battle  had  been  fought,  but  John  had  seized 
many  of  the  royal  castles,  and  the  indignation  stirred 
by  Longchamp's  arrest  of  Archbishop  Geoffry  of  York, 
a  bastard  son  of  Henry  the  Second,  called  the  whole 
baronage  to  the  field.  The  nobles  swore  fealty  to  John 
as  Richard's  successor,  and  William  of  Coutances  saw 
himself  forced  to  show  his  commission  as  Justiciar,  and 
to  assent  to  Longchamp's  exile  from  the  realm. 

The  tidings  of  this  revolution  reached  Richard  in  the 
Holy  Land.  He  had  landed  at  Acre  in  the  summer  and 
joined  with  the  French  King  in  its  siege.  But  on  the 
surrender  of  the  town  Philip  at  once  sailed  home,  while 
Richard,  marching  from  Acre  to  Joppa,  pushed  inland  to 
Jerusalem.  The  city  however  was  saved  by  false  news  of 
its  strength,  and  through  the  following  winter  and  the 
spring  of  1192  the  King  limited  his  activity  to  securing 
the  fortresses  of  southern  Palestine.  In  June  he  again 
advanced  on  Jerusalem,  but  the  revolt  of  his  army  forced 
him  a  second  time  to  fall  back,  and  news  of  Philip's  in- 
trigues with  John  drove  him  to  abandon  further  efforts. 
There  was  need  to  hasten  home.  Sailing  for  speed's  sake 
in  a  merchant  vessel,  he  was  driven  by  a  storm  on  the 
Adriatic  coast,  and  while  journeying  in  disguise  over- 
land arrested  in  December  at  Vienna  by  his  personal 
enemy,  Duke  Leopold  of  Austria.  Through  the  whole 
year  John,  in  disgust  at  his  displacement  by  William  of 
Coutances,  had  been  plotting  fruitlessly  with  Philip.  But 
the  news  of  this  capture  at  once  roused  both  to  activity. 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071—1214.    175 

John  secured  his  castles  and  seized  Windsor,  giving  out 
that  the  King  would  never  return ;  while  Philip  strove 
to  induce  the  Emperor,  Henry  the  Sixth,  to  whom  the 
Duke  of  Austria  had  given  Richard  up,  to  retain  his  cap- 
tive. But  a  new  influence  now  appeared  on  the  scene. 
The  see  of  Canterbury  was  vacant,  and  Richard  from  his 
prison  bestowed  it  on  Hubert  Walter,  the  Bishop  of 
Salisbury,  a  nephew  of  Ranulf  de  Glanvill  and  who  had 
acted  as  secretary  to  Bishop  Longchamp.  Hubert's 
ability  was  seen  in  the  skill  with  which  he  held  John  at 
bay  and  raised  the  enormous  ransom  which  Henry  de- 
manded, the  whole  people,  clergy  as  well  as  lay,  paying 
a  fourth  of  their  movable  goods.  To  gain  his  release 
however  Richard  was  forced  besides  this  payment  of  ran- 
som to  dp  homage  to  the  Emperor,  not  only  for  the  king- 
dom of  Aries  with  which  Henry  invested  him  but  for 
England  itself,  whose  crown  he  resigned  into  the  Em- 
peror's hands  and  received  back  as  a  fief.  But  John's 
open  revolt  made  even  these  terms  welcome,  and  Richard 
hurried  to  England  in  the  spring  of  1194.  He  found  the 
rising  already  quelled  by  the  decision  with  which  the 
Primate  led  an  army  against  John's  castles,  and  his  land- 
ing was  followed  by  his  brother's  complete  submission. 

The  firmness  of  Hubert  Walter  had  secured  order  in 
England,  but  oversea  Richard  found  himself  face  to  face 
with  dangers  which  he  was  too  clear-sighted  to  under- 
value. Destitute  of  his  father's  administrative  genius, 
less  ingenious  in  his  political  conceptions  than  John, 
Richard  was  far  from  being  a  mere  soldier.  A  love  of 
adventure,  a  pride  in  sheer  physical  strength,  here  and 
there  a  romantic  generosity,  jostled  roughly  with  the 
craft,  the  unscrupulousness,  the  violence  of  his  race  ;  but 
he  was  at  heart  a  statesman,  cool  and  patient  in  the  exe- 
cution of  his  plans  as  he  was  bold  their  conception. 
"  The  devil  is  loose ;  take  care  of  yourself,"  Philip  had 
written  to  John  at  the  news  of  Richard's  release.  In  the 
French  King's  case  a  restless  ambition  was  spurred  to 
action  by  insults  which  he  had  borne  during  the  Crusade. 
He  had  availed  himself  of  Richard's  imprisonment  to  in- 
vade Normandy,  while  the  lords  of  Aquitaine  rose  in  open 


176  HISTOEY  OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

revolt  under  the  troubadour  Bertrand  de  Born.  Jeal- 
ousy of  the  rule  of  strangers,  weariness  of  the  turbulence 
of  the  mercenary  soldiers  of  the  Angevins  or  of  the  greed 
and  oppression  of  their  financial  administration,  com- 
bined with  an  impatience  of  their  firm  government  and 
vigorous  justice  to  alienate  the  nobles  of  their  provinces 
on  the  Continent.  Loyalty  among  the  people  there  was 
none  ;  even  Anjou,  the  home  of  their  race,  drifted  towards 
Philip  as  steadly  as  Poitou.  But  in  warlike  ability 
Richard  was  more  than  Philip's  peer.  IJe  ne^d  him  in 
check  on  the  Norman  frontier  and  surprised  his  treasure 
at  Freteval  while  he  reduced  to  submission  the  rebels  of 
Aquitaine.  Hubert  Walter  gathered  vast  sums  to  sup- 
port the  army  of  mercenaries  which  Richard  led  against 
his  foes.  The  country  groaned  under  its  burdens,  but  it 
owned  the  justice  and  firmness  of  the  Primate's  rule,  and 
the  measures  which  he  took  to  procure  money  with  as 
little  oppression  as  might  be  proved  steps  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  nation  in  its  own  self-government.  The  taxes 
were  assessed  by  a  jury  of  sworn  knights  at  each  circuit 
of  the  justices  ;  the  grand  jury  of  the  county  was  based 
on  the  election  of  knights  in  the  hundred  courts  ;  and 
the  keeping  of  pleas  of  the  crown  was  taken  from  the 
sheriff  and  given  to  a  newly  elected  officer,  the  coroner. 
In  these  elections  were  found  at  a  later  time  precedents 
for  parliamentary  representation  ;  in  Hubert's  mind  they 
were  doubtless  intended  to  do  little  more  than  reconcile 
the  people  to  the  crushing  taxation.  His  work  poured 
a  million  into  the  treasury,  and  enabled  Richard  during 
a  short  truce  to  detach  Flanders  by  his  bribes  from  the 
French  alliance,  and  to  unite  the  Counts  of  Chartres, 
Champagne,  and  Boulogne  with  the  Bretons  in  a  revolt 
against  Philip.  He  won  a  yet  more  valuable  aid  in  the 
election  of  his  nephew  Otto  of  Saxony,  a  son  of  Henry 
the  Lion,  to  the  German  throne,  and  his  envoy  William 
Longchamp  knitted  an  alliance  which  would  bring  the 
German  lances  to  bear  on  the  King  of  Paris. 

But  the  security  of  Normandy  was  requisite  to  the  success 
of  these  wider  plans,  and  Richard  saw  that  its  defence 
could  no  longer  rest  on  the  loyalty  of  the  Norman  people. 


ENGLAND    UNDER    FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    177 

His  father  might  trace  his  descent  through  Matilda  from 
the  line  of  Rolf,  but  the  Angevin  ruler  was  in  fact  a 
stranger  to  the  Norman.  It  was  impossible  for  a  Norman 
to  recognize  his  Duke  with  any  real  sympathy  in  the 
Angevin  prince  whom  he  saw  moving  along  the  border 
at  the  head  of  Braban^on  mercenaries,  in  whose  camp  the 
old  names  of  the  Norman  baronage  were  missing  and 
Merchade",  a  Gascon  ruffian,  held  supreme  command.  The 
purely  military  site  that  Richard  selected  for  a  new 
fortress  with  which  he  guarded  the  border  showed  his 
realization  of  the  fact  that  Normandy  could  now  only  be 
held  by  force  of  arms.  As  a  monument  of  warlike  skill 
his  "  Saucy  Castle,"  Chateau  Gaillard,  stands  first  among 
the  fortresses  of  the  middle  ages.  Richard  fixed  its  site 
where  the  Seine  bends  suddenly  at  Gaillon  in  a  great 
semicircle  to  the  north,  and  where  the  valley  of  Les 
Andelys  breaks  the  line  of  the  chalk  cliffs  along  its 
banks.  Blue  masses  of  woodland  crown  the  distant  hills ; 
within  the  river  curve  lies  a  dull  reach  of  flat  meadow, 
around  which  the  Seine,  broken  with  green  islets  and 
dappled  with  the  gray  and  blue  of  the  sky,  flashes  like  a 
silver  bow  on  its  way  to  Rouen.  The  castle  formed  part 
of  an  entrenched  camp  which  Richard  designed  to  cover 
his  Norman  capital.  Approach  by  the  river  was  blocked 
by  a  stockade  and  a  bridge  of  boats,  by  a  fort  on  the  islet 
in  mid  stream,  and  by  a  tower  which  the  King  built  in 
the  valley  of  the  Gainbon,  then  an  impassable  marsh.  In 
the  angle  between  this  valley  and  the  Seine,  on  a  spur  of 
the  chalk  hills  which  only  a  narrow  neck  of  land  con- 
nects with  the  general  plateau,  rose  at  the  height  of  three 
hundred  feet  above  the  river  the  crowning  fortress  of  the 
whole.  Its  outworks  and  the  walls  which  connected  it 
with  the  town  and  stockade  have  for  the  most  part  gone, 
but  time  and  the  hand  of  man  have  done  little  to  destroy 
the  fortifications  themselves — the  fosse,  hewn  deep  into 
the  solid  rock,  with  casemates  hollowed  out  along  its 
sides,  the  fluted  walls  of  the  citadel,  the  huge  donjon 
looking  down  on  the  brown  roofs  and  huddled  gables  of 
Les  Andelys.  Even  now  in  its  ruin  we  can  understand 
the  triumphant  outburst  of  its  royal  builder  as  he  saw  it 


178  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

rising  against  the  sky  :  "  How  pretty  a  child  is   mine, 
this  child  of  but  one  year  old !  " 

The  easy  reduction  of  Normandy  on  the  fall  of  Chateau 
Gaillard  at  a  later  time  proved  Richard's  foresight ;  but 
foresight  and  sagacity  were  mingled  in  him  with  a  brutal 
violence  and  a  callous  indifference  to  honor.  "  I  would 
take  it,  were  its  walls  of  iron,"  Philip  exclaimed  in  wrath 
as  he  saw  the  fortress  rise.  "  I  would  hold  it,  were  its 
walls  of  butter,"  was  the  defiant  answer  of  his  foe.  It 
was  Church  land  and  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen  laid  Nor- 
mandy under  interdict  at  its  seizure,  but  the  King  met 
the  interdict  with  mockery,  and  intrigued  with  Rome 
till  the  censure  was  withdrawn.  He  was  just  as  defiant 
of  a  "  rain  of  blood,"  whose  fall  scared  his  courtiers. 
"  Had  an  angel  from  heaven  bid  him  abandon  his  work," 
says  a  cool  observer,  "  he  would  have  answered  with  a 
curse."  The  twelvemonth's  hard  work,  in  fact,  by  secur- 
ing the  Norman  frontier  set  Richard  free  to  deal  his  long- 
planned  blow  at  Philip.  Money  only  was  wanting ;  for 
England  had  at  last  struck  against  the  continued  exac- 
tions. In  1198  Hugh,  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  brought  nobles 
and  bishops  to  refuse  a  new  demand  for  the  maintenance 
of  foreign  soldiers,  and  Hubert  Walter  resigned  in  de- 
spair. A  new  justiciar,  Geoff ry  Fitz-Peter,  Earl  of  Essex, 
extorted  some  money  by  a  harsh  assize  of  the  forests  ;  but 
the  exchequer  was  soon  drained,  and  Richard  listened 
with  more  than  the  greed  of  his  race  to  rumors  that  a 
treasure  had  been  found  in  the  fields  of  the  Limousin. 
Twelve  knights  of  gold  seated  round  a  golden  table 
Avere  the  find,  it  was  said,  of  the  Lord  of  Chaluz.  Treas- 
ure-trove at  any  rate  there  was,  and  in  the  spring  of  1199 
Richard  prowled  around  the  walls.  But  the  castle  held 
stubbornly  out  till  the  Kind's  greed  passed  into  savage 
menace.  He  would  hang  all,  he  swore — man,  woman, 
the  very  child  at  the  breast.  In  the  midst  of  his  threats 
an  arrow  from  the  wall  struck  him  down.  He  died  as  he 
had  lived,  owning  the  wild  passion  which  for  seven  years 
past  had  kept  him  from  confession  lest  he  should  be 
forced  to  pardon  Philip,  forgiving  with  kingly  generosity 
the  archer  who  had  shot  him. 


ENGLAND   UNDER   FOREIGN   KINGS.      1071 — 1214.    179 

The  Angevin  dominion  broke  to  pieces  at  his  death. 
John  was  acknowledged  as  King  in  England  and  Nor- 
mandy, Aquitaine  was  secured  for  him  by  its  Duchess, 
his  mother  Eleanor ;  but  Anjou,  Maine,  and  Touraine  did 
homage  to  Arthur,  the  son  of  his  elder  brother  Geoffry, 
the  late  Duke  of  Britanny.  The  ambition  of  Philip,  who 
protected  his  cause,  turned  the  day  against  Arthur ;  the 
Angevins  rose  against  the  French  garrisons  with  which 
the  French  King  practically  annexed  the  country,  and  in 
May  1200  a  treaty  between  the  two  kings  left  John 
master  of  the  whole  dominion  of  his  house.  But  fresh 
troubles  broke  out  in  Poitou  ;  Philip,  on  John's  refusal 
to  answer  the  charges  of  the  Poitevin  barons  at  his  Court, 
declared  in  1202  his  fiefs  forfeited ;  and  Arthur,  now  a 
boy  of  fifteen,  strove  to  seize  Eleanor  in  the  castle  of 
Mirabeau.  Surprised  at  its  siege  by  a  rapid  march  of 
the  King,  the  boy  was  taken  prisoner  to  Rouen,  and 
murdered  there  in  the  spring  of  1203,  as  men  believed, 
by  his  uncle's  hand.  This  brutal  outrage  at  once  roused 
the  French  provinces  in  revolt,  while  Philip  sentenced 
John  to  forfeiture  as  a  murderer  and  marched  straight  on 
Normandy.  The  ease  with  which  the  conquest  of  the 
Duchy  was  effected  can  only  be  explained  by  the  utter 
absence  of  any  popular  resistance  on  the  part  of  the 
Normans  themselves.  Half  a  century  before  the  sight  of 
a  Frenchman  in  the  land  would  have  roused  every  peasant 
to  arms  from  Avranches  to  Dieppe.  But  town  after  town 
surrendered  at  the  mere  summons  of  Philip,  and  the  con- 
quest was  hardly  over  before  Normandy  settled  down 
into  the  most  loyal  of  the  provinces  of  France.  Much 
of  this  was  due  to  the  wise  liberality  with  which  Philip 
met  the  claims  of  the  towns  to  independence  and  self- 
government,  as  well  as  to  the  overpowering  force  and 
military  ability  with  which  the  conquest  was  effected. 
But  the  utter  absence  of  opposition  sprang  from  a  deeper 
cause.  To  the  Norman  his  transfer  from  John  to  Philip 
was  a  mere  passing  from  one  foreign  master  to  another, 
and  foreigner  for  foreigner  Philip  was  the  less  alien  of 
the  two.  Between  France  and  Normandy  there  had 
been  as  many  years  of  friendship  as  of  strife  ;  between 


180  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

Norman  and  Angevin  lay  a  century  of  bitterest  hate. 
Moreover,  the  subjection  to  France  was  the  realization 
in  fact  of  a  dependence  which  had  always  existed  in 
theory ;  Philip  entered  Rouen  as  the  over-lord  of  its 
Dukes  ;  while  the  submission  to  the  house  of  Anjou  had 
been  the  most  humiliating  of  all  submissions,  the  submis- 
sion to  an  equal.  In  1204  Philip  turned  on  the  south 
with  as  startling  a  success.  Maine,  Anjou,  and  Touraine 
passed  with  little  resistance  into  his  hands,  and  the  death 
of  Eleanor  was  followed  by  the  submission  of  the  bulk  of 
Aquitaine.  Little  was  left  save  the  country  south  of  the 
Garonne  ;  and  from  the  lordship  of  a  vast  empire  that 
stretched  from  the  Tyne  to  the  Pyrenees  John  saw  him- 
self reduced  at  a  blow  to  the  realm  of  England. 


BOOK  HI. 
THE   CHARTER. 
1204—1291 


AUTHORITIES  FOR  BOOK  III. 
1204—1291. 

A  chronicle  drawn  up  at  the  monastery  of  Barnwell  near  Cam- 
bridge, and  which  has  been  embodied  in  the  "Meinoriale"  of  Walter 
of  Coventry,  gives  us  a  contemporary  account  of  the  period  from  1201 
to  1225.  We  possess  another  contemporary  annalist  for  the  same 
period  iii  Roger  of  Wendover,  the  first  of  the  published  chroniclers  of 
St.  Albans,  whose  work  extends  to  1235.  Though  full  of  detail  Roger 
is  inaccurate,  and  he  has  strong  royal  and  ecclesiastical  sympathies  ; 
but  his  chronicle  was  subsequently  revised  in  a  more  patriotic  sense  by 
another  monk  of  the  same  abbey,  Matthew  Paris,  and  continued  in  the 
"  Greater  Chronicle  "  of  the  latter. 

Matthew  has  left  a  parallel  but  shorter  account  of  the  time  in  his 
"  Historia  Anglorum  "  (from  the  Conquest  to  1253) .  He  is  the  last  of 
the  great  chroniclers  of  his  house  ;  for  the  chronicles  of  Rishanger,  his 
successor  at  St.  Albans,  and  of  the  obscurer  annalists  who  worked  on 
at  that  Abbey  till  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  are  little  save  scant  and  life- 
less jottings  of  events  which  become  more  and  more  local  as  time  goes 
on.  The  annals  of  the  abbeys  of  Waverley,  Dunstable,  and  Burton, 
which  have  been  published  in  the  "  Annales  Monastic! "  of  the  Rolls 
series,  add  important  details  for  the  reigns  of  John  and  Henry  III. 
Those  of  Melrose,  Osney,  and  Lanercost  help  us  in  the  close  of  the 
latter  reign,  where  help  is  especially  welcome.  For  the  Barons'  war 
we  have  besides  these  the  royalist  chronicle  of  Wykes,  Rishanger's 
fragment  published  by  the  Camden  Society,  and  a  chronicle  of  Bar- 
tholomew de  Cotton,  which  is  contemporary  from  1264  to  1298.  Where 
the  chronicles  fail  however  the  public  documents  of  the  realm  become 
of  high  importance.  The  "Royal  Letters"  (1216—1272)  which  have 
been  printed  from  the  Patent  Rolls  by  Professor  Shirley  (Rolls  Series) 
throw  great  light  on  Henry's  politics. 

Our  municipal  history  during  this  period  is  fully  represented  by  that 
of  London.  For  the  general  history  of  the  capital  the  Rolls  series  has 
given  us  its  "Liber  Albus  "  and  "Liber  Custumarum,"  while  a  vivid 
account  of  its  communal  revolution  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  Liber  de 
Antiquis  Legibus "  published  by  the  Camden  Society.  A  store  of 
documents  will  be  found  in  the  Charter  Rolls  published  by  the  Record 
Commission,  in  Brady's  work  on  "  English  Boroughs,"  and  in  the 
"  Ordinances  of  English  Gilds,"  published  with  a  remarkable  preface 
from  the  pen  of  Dr.  Brentano  by  the  Early  English  Text  Society. 
For  our  religious  and  intellectual  history  materials  now  become  abun- 
dant, Grosseteste's  Letters  throw  light  on  the  state  of  the  Church  and 

(183) 


184  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Its  relations  with  Rome ;  those  of  Adam  Marsh  give  us  interesting  de- 
tails of  Earl  Simon's  relation  to  the  religious  movement  of  his  day  ; 
and  Eccleston's  tract  on  the  arrival  of  the  Friars  is  embodied  in  the 
"  Monumenta  Franciscana."  For  the  Universities  we  have  the  col- 
lection of  materials  edited  by  Mr.  Anstey  under  the  name  of  "  Muni- 
menta  Academica." 

With  the  close  of  Henry's  reign  our  directly  historic  materials  be- 
come scantier  and  scantier.  The  monastic  annals  we  have  before  men- 
tioned are  supplemented  by  the  jejune  entries  of  Trivet  and  Murimuth, 
by  the  "Annales  Angliae  et  Scotise,"  by  Rishanger's  Chronicle,  his 
"  Gesta  Edwardi  Primi,"  and  three  fragments  of  his  annals  (all  pub- 
lished in  the  Rolls  Series).  The  portion  of  the  so-called  "Walsing- 
ham's  History"  which  relates  to  this  period  is  now  attributed  by  Mr. 
Riley  to  Rishanger's  hand .  For  the  wars  in  the  north  and  in  the  west 
we  have  no  records  from  the  side  of  the  conquered.  The  social  and 
physical  state  of  Wales  indeed  is  illustrated  by  the  "  Itinerarium " 
which  Gerald  du  Barri  drew  up  in  the  twelfth  century,  but  Scotland 
has  no  contemporary  chronicles  for  this  period  ;  the  jingling  rimes  of 
Blind  Harry  are  two  hundred  years  later  than  his  hero,  Wallace.  We 
possess  however  a  copious  collection  of  State  papers  in  the  "  Rotuli 
Scotise,"  the  "Documents  and  Records  illustrative  of  the  History  of 
Scotland  "  which  were  edited  by  Sir  F.  Palgrave,  as  well  as  in  Rymer's 
Foedera.  For  the  history  of  our  Parliament  the  most  noteworthy  ma- 
terials have  been  collected  by  Professor  Stubbs  in  his  Select  Charters, 
and  he  has  added  to  them  a  short  treatise  called  "  Modus  Tenendi 
Parliamenta,"  which  may  be  taken  as  a  fair  account  of  its  actual  state 
and  powers  in  the  fourteenth  century. 


CHAPTER  I. 

JOHN. 

1214—1216. 

THE  loss  of  Normandy  did  more  than  drive  John  from 
the  foreign  dominions  of  his  race  ;  it  set  him  face  to  face 
with  England  itself.  England  was  no  longer  a  distant 
treasure-house  from  which  gold  could  be  drawn  for  wars 
along  the  Epte  or  the  Loire,  no  longer  a  possession  to  be 
kept  in  order  by  wise  ministers  and  by  flying  visits  from 
its  foreign  King.  Henceforth  it  was  his  home.  It  was 
to  be  ruled  by  his  personal  and  continuous  rule.  People 
and  sovereign  were  to  know  each  other,  to  be  brought 
into  contact  with  each  other  as  they  had  never  been 
brought  since  the  conquest  of  the  Norman.  The  change 
in  the  attitude  of  the  king  was  the  more  momentous  that 
it  took  place  at  a  time  when  the  attitude  of  the  country 
itself  was  rapidly  changing.  The  Norman  Conquest 
had  given  a  new  aspect  to  the  land.  A  foreign  king 
ruled  it  through  foreign  ministers.  Foreign  nobles  were 
quartered  in  every  manor.  A  military  organization  of 
the  country  changed  while  it  simplified  the  holding  of 
every  estate.  Huge  castles  of  white  stone  bridled  town 
and  country ;  huge  stone  minsters  told  how  the  Norman 
had  bridled  even  the  Church.  But  the  change  was  in 
great  measure  an  external  one.  The  real  life  of  the 
nation  was  little  affected  by  the  shock  of  the  Conquest. 
English  institutions,  the  local,  judicial,  and  adminis- 
trative forms  of  the  country  were  the  same  as  of  old. 
Like  the  English  tongue  they  remained  practically 
unaltered.  For  a  century  after  the  Conquest  only  a 
few  new  words  crept  in  from  the  language  of  the  con- 


186  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

querors,  and  so  entirely  did  the  spoken  tongue  of  the 
nation  at  large  remain  unchanged  that  William  himself 
tried  to  learn  it  that  he  might  administer  justice  to  his 
subjects.  Even  English  literature,  banished  as  it  was 
from  the  court  of  the  stranger  and  exposed  to  the  fash- 
ionable rivalry  of  Latin  scholars,  survived  not  only  in 
religious  works,  in  poetic  paraphrases  of  gospels  and 
psalms,  but  in  the  great  monument  of  our  prose,  the 
English  Chronicle.  It  was  not  till  the  miserable  reign 
of  Stephen  that  the  Chronicle  died  out  in  the  Abbey  of 
Peterborough.  But  the  "  Sayings  of  Alfred  "  show  a 
native  literature  going  on  through  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Second,  and  the  appearance  of  a  great  work  of  English 
verse  coincides  in  point  of  time  with  the  return  of  John 
to  his  island  realm.  "  There  was  a  priest  in  the  land 
whose  name  was  Layamon  ;  he  was  the  son  of  Leovenath  ; 
may  the  Lord  be  gracious  to  him  !  He  dwelt  at  Earnley, 
a  noble  church  on  the  bank  of  Severn  (good  it  seemed 
to  him !)  near  Radstone,  where  he  read  books.  It  came 
to  mind  to  him  and  in  his  chiefest  thought  that  he  would 
tell  the  noble  deeds  of  England,  what  the  men  were 
named  and  whence  they  came  who  first  had  English 
land."  Journeying  far  and  wide  over  the  country,  the 
priest  of  Earnley  found  Bseda  and  Wace,  the  books  too 
of  St.  Albin  and  St.  Austin.  "  Layamon  laid  down 
these  books  and  turned  the  leaves ;  he  beheld  them 
lovingly;  may  the  Lord  be  gracious  to  him  !  Pen  he 
took  with  finger  and  wrote  a  book-skin,  and  the  true 
words  set  together,  and  compressed  the  three  books  into 
one."  Layamon's  church  is  now  that  of  Areley,  near 
Bewdley  in  Worcestershire;  his  poem  was  in  fact  an 
expansion  of  Wace's  "Brut"  with  insertions  from  Bseda. 
Historically  it  is  worthless ;  but  as  a  monument  of  our 
language  it  is  beyond  all  price.  In  more  than  thirty 
thousand  lines  not  more  than  fifty  Norman  words  are  to 
be  found.  Even  the  old  poetic  tradition  remains  the 
same.  The  alliterative  metre  of  the  earlier  verse  is  still 
only  slightly  affected  by  rhyming  terminations  ;  the  similes 
are  the  few  natural  similes  of  Csedmon  ;  the  battle-scenes 
are  painted  with  the  same  rough,  simple  jov. 


THE   CHARTER.       1204 1291.  187 

Instead  of  crushing  England  indeed  the  Conquest  did 
more  than  any  event  that  had  gone  before  to  build  up  an 
English  people.  All  local  distinctions,  the  distinction 
of  Saxon  from  Mercian,  of  both  from  Northumbrian,  died 
away  ,  beneath  the  common  pressure  of  the  stranger. 
The  Conquest  was  hardly  over  when  we  see  the  rise  of 
a  new  national  feeling,  of  a  new  patriotism.  In  his  quiet 
cell  at  Worcester  the  monk  Florence  strives  to  palliate 
by  excuses  of  treason  or  the  weakness  of  rulers  the  de- 
feats of  Englishmen  by  the  Danes.  JElfred,  the  great 
name  of  the  English  past,  gathers  round  him  a  legend- 
ary worship,  and  the  "  Sayings  of  Alfred  "  embody  the 
ideal  of  an  English  king.  We  see  the  new  vigor  drawn 
from  this  deeper  consciousness  of  national  unity  in  a 
national  action  which  began  as  soon  as  the  Conquest  had 
given  place  to  strife  among  the  conquerors.  A  common 
hostility  to  the  conquering  baronage  gave  the  nation 
leaders  in  its  foreign  sovereigns,  and  the  sword  which 
had  been  sheathed  at  Senlac  was  drawn  for  triumphs 
which  avenged  it.  It  was  under  William  the  Red  that 
English  soldiers  shouted  scorn  .at  the  Norman  barons 
who  surrendered  at  Rochester.  It  was  under  Henry  the 
First  that  an  English  army  faced  Duke  Robert  and  his 
foreign  knighthood  when  they  landed  for  a  fresh  inva- 
sion, "  not  fearing  the  Normans."  It  was  under  the 
same  great  Kino-  that  Englishmen  conquered  Normandy 
in  turn  on  the  field  of  Tenchebray.  This  overthrow  of 
the  conquering  baronage,  this  union  of  the  conquered 
with  the  King,  brought  about  the  fusion  of  the  conquer- 
ors in  the  general  body  of  the  English  people.  As  early 
as  the  days  of  Henry  the  Second  the  descendants  of  Nor- 
man and  Englishman  had  become  indistinguishable.  Both 
found  a  bond  in  a  common  English  feeling  and  English 
patriotism,  in  a  common  hatred  of  the  Angevin  and 
Poitevin  "  foreigners "  who  streamed  into  England  in 
the  wake  of  Henry  and  his  sons.  Both  had  profited  by 
the  stern  discipline  of  the  Norman  rule.  The  wretched 
reign  of  Stephen  alone  broke  the  long  peace,  a  peace 
without  parallel  elsewhere,  which  in  England  stretched 
from  the  settlement  of  the  Conquest  to  the  return  of 


HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

John.  Of  her  kings'  forays  along  Norman  or  Aquita- 
nian  borders  England  heard  little ;  she  cared  less.  Even 
Richard's  crusade  woke  little  interest  in  his  island  realm. 
What  England  saw  in  her  Kings  was  "  the  good  peace 
they  made  in  the  land."  And  with  peace  came  a  stern 
but  equitable  rule,  judicial  and  administrative  reforms 
that  carried  order  and  justice  to  every  corner  of  the  land, 
a  wealth  that  grew  steadily  in  spite  of  heavy  taxation, 
an  immense  outburst  of  material  and  intellectual  ac- 
tivity. 

It  was  with  a  new  English  people  therefore  that  John 
found  himself  face  to  face.  The  nation  which  he  fronted 
was  a  nation  quickened  with  a  new  life  and  throbbing 
with  a  new  energy.  Not  least  among  the  signs  of  this 
energy  was  the  upgrowth  of  our  Universities.  The 
establishment  of  the  great  schools  which  bore  this  name 
was  everywhere  throughout  Europe  a  special  mark  of 
the  impulse  which  Christendom  gained  from  the  cru- 
sades. A  new  fervor  of  study  sprang  up  in  the  West 
from  its  contact  with  the  more  cultured  East.  Travel- 
lers like  Adelard  of  Bath  brought  back  the  first  rudi- 
ments of  physical  and  mathematical  science  from  the 
schools  of  Cordova  or  Bagdad.  In  the  twelfth  century 
a  classical  revival  restored  Caesar  and  Virgil  to  the  list 
of  monastic  studies,  and  left  its  stamp  on  the  pedantic 
style,  the  profuse  classical  quotations  of  writers  like 
William  of  Malmesbury  or  John  of  Salisbury.  The 
scholastic  philosophy  sprang  up  in  the  schools  of  Paris. 
The  Roman  law  was  revived  by  the  imperialist  doctors 
of  Bologna.  The  long  mental  inactivity  of  feudal  Europe 
broke  up  like  ice  before  a  summer's  sun.  Wandering 
teachers  such  as  Lanfranc  or  Anselm  crossed  sea  and 
land  to  spread  the  new  power  of  knowledge.  The  same 
spirit  of  restlessness,  of  inquiry,  of  impatience  with  the 
older  traditions  of  mankind  either  local  or  intellectual 
that  drove  half  Christendom  to  the  tomb  of  its  Lord 
crowded  the  roads  with  thousands  of  young  scholars 
hurrying  to  the  chosen  seats  where  teachers  were  gath- 
ered together.  A  new  power  sprang  up  in  the  midst  of 
a  world  which  had  till  now  recognized  no  power  but  that 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  189 

of  sheer  brute  force.  Poor  as  they  were,  sometimes  even 
of  servile  race,  the  wandering  scholars  who  lectured  in 
every  cloister  were  hailed  as  "  masters  "  by  the  crowds 
at  their  feet.  Abelard  was  a  foe  worthy  of  the  threats 
of  councils,  of  the  thunders  of  the  Church.  The  teach- 
ing of  a  single  Lombard  was  of  note  enough  in  England 
to  draw  down  the  prohibition  of  a  King. 

Vacarius  was  probably  a  guest  in  the  court  of  Arch- 
bishop Theobald  where  Thomas  of  London  and  John  of 
Salisbury  were  already  busy  with  the  study  of  the  Civil 
Law.  But  when  he  opened  lectures  on  it  at  Oxford  he  was 
at  once  silenced  by  Stephen,  who  was  at  that  moment  at 
war  with  the  Church  and  jealous  of  the  power  which  the 
wreck  of  the  royal  authority  was  throwing  into  Theo- 
bald's hands.  At  this  time  Oxford  stood  in  the  first  rank 
among  English  towns.  Its  town  church  of  St.  Martin 
rose  from  the  midst  of  a  huddled  group  of  houses,  girded 
in  with  massive  walls,  that  lay  along  the  dry  upper  ground 
of  a  low  peninsula  between  the  streams  of  Cherwell  and 
the  Thames.  The  ground  fell  gently  on  either  side,  east- 
ward and  westward,  to  these  rivers ;  while  on  the  south 
a  sharper  descent  led  down  across  swampy  meadows,  to 
the  ford  from  which  the  town  drew  its  name  and  to  the 
bridge  that  succeeded  it.  Around  lay  a  wild  forest  country, 
moors  such  as  Cowley  and  Bullingdon  fringing  the  course 
of  Thames,  great  woods  of  which  Shotover  and  Bagley 
are  the  relics  closing  the  horizon  to  the  south  and  east. 
Though  the  two  huge  towers  of  its  Norman  castle  marked 
the  strategic  importance  of  Oxford  as  commanding  the 
river  valley  along  which  the  commerce  of  Southern  Eng- 
land mainly  flowed,  its  walls  formed  the  least  element  in 
the  town's  military  strength,  for  on  every  side  but  the 
north  it  was  guarded  by  the  swampy  meadows  along 
Cherwell  or  by  an  intricate  network  of  streams  into 
which  the  Thames  breaks  among  the  meadows  of  Osney. 
From  the  midst  of  these  meadows  rose  a  mitred  abbey  of 
Austin  Canons  which  with  the  elder  priory  of  St.  Frides- 
wide  gave  Oxford  some  ecclesiastical  dignity.  The  res- 
idence of  the  Norman  house  of  the  D'Oillis  within  its 
castle,  the  frequent  visits  of  English  kings  to  a  palace 


190  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

without  its  walls,  the  presence  again  and  again  01  im- 
portant Parliaments,  marked  its  political  weight  with  the 
realm.  The  settlement  of  one  of  the  wealthiest  among 
the  English  Jewries  in  the  very  heart  of  the  town  indi- 
cated, while  it  promoted,  the  activity  of  its  trade.  No 
place  better  illustrates  the  transformation  of  the  land  in 
the  hands  of  its  Norman  masters,  the  sudden  outburst  of 
industrial  effort,  the  sudden  expansion  of  commerce  and 
accumulation  of  wealth  which  followed  the  Conquest. 
To  the  west  of  the  town  rose  one  of  the  stateliest  of 
English  castles,  and  in  the  meadows  beneath  the  hardly 
less  stately  abbey  of  Osney.  In  the  fields  to  the  north 
the  last  of  the  Norman  kings  raised  his  palace  of  Beau- 
mont. In  the  southern  quarter  of  the  city  the  canons  of 
St.  Frideswide  reared  the  church  which  still  exists  as  the 
diocesan  cathedral,  while  the  piety  of  the  Norman  Castel- 
lans rebuilt  almost  all  its  parish  churches  and  founded 
within  their  new  castle  walls  the  church  of  the  Canons 
of  St.  George. 

We  know  nothing  of  the  cause  which  drew  students 
and  teachers  within  the  walls  of  Oxford.  It  is  possible 
that  here  as  elsewhere  a  new  teacher  quickened  older 
educational  foundations,  and  that  the  cloisters  of  Osney 
and  St.  Frideswide  already  possessed  schools  which  burst 
into  a  larger  life  under  the  impulse  of  Vacarius.  As  yet 
however  the  fortunes  of  the  University  were  obscured 
by  the  glories  of  Paris.  English  scholars  gathered  in 
thousands  round  the  chairs  of  William  of  Champeaux  or 
Abelard.  The  English  took  their  place  as  one  of  the 
"  nations  "  of  the  French  University.  John  of  Salisbury 
became  famous  as  one  of  the  Parisian  teachers.  Thomas 
of  London  wandered  to  Paris  from  his  school  at  Merton. 
But  through  the  peaceful  reign  of  Henry  the  Second 
Oxford  quietly  grew  in  numbers  and  repute,  and  forty 
years  after  the  visit  of  Vacarius  its  educational  position 
was  fully  established.  When  Gerald  of  Wales  read  his 
amnsing  Topography  of  Ireland  to  its  students  the  most 
learned  and  famous  of  the  English  clergy  were  to  be 
found  within  its  walls.  At  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth 
century  Oxford  stood  without  a  rival  in  its  own  country 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  191 

while  in  European  celebrity  it  took  rank  with  the  greatest 
schools  of  the  Western  world.  But  to  realize  this  Oxford 
of  t'-.e  past  we  must  dismiss  from  our  minds  all  recol- 
lections of  the  Oxford  of  the  present.  In  the  outer  look 
of  the  new  University  there  was  nothing  of  the  pomp 
that  overawes  the  freshman  as  he  first  paces  the  "  High  " 
or  looks  down  from  the  gallery  of  St.  Mary's.  In 
the  stead  of  long  fronts  of  memorable  colleges,  of 
stately  walks  beneath  immemorial  elms,  history  plunges 
us  into  the  mean  and  filthy  lanes  of  a  mediaeval  town. 
Thousands  of  boys,  huddled  in  bare  lodging-houses, 
clustering  round  teachers  as  poor  as  themselves  in 
church  porch  and  house  porch,  drinking,  quarrelling, 
dicing,  begging  at  the  corners  of  the  streets,  take 
the  place  of  the  brightly-colored  train  of  doctors  and 
Heads.  Mayor  and  Chancellor  struggled  in  vain  to 
enforce  order  or  peace  on  this  seething  mass  of  turbulent 
life.  The  retainers  who  followed  their  young  lords  to 
the  University  fought  out  the  feuds  of  their  houses  in 
the  streets.  Scholars  from  Kent  and  scholars  from  Scot- 
land waged  the  bitter  struggle  of  North  and  South.  At 
nightfall  roysterer  and  reveller  roamed  with  torches 
through  the  narrow  lanes,  defying  bailiffs,  and  cutting 
down  burghers  at  their  doors.  Now  a  mob  of  clerks 
plunged  into  the  Jewry  and  wiped  off  the  memory  of 
bills  and  bonds  by  sacking  a  Hebrew  house  or  two.  Now 
a  tavern  squabble  between  scholar  and  townsman  widened 
into  a  general  broil,  and  the  academical  bell  of  St.  Mary's 
vied  with  the  town  bell  of  St.  Martin's  in  clanging  to 
arms.  Every  phase  of  ecclesiastical  controversy  or  polit- 
ical strife  was  preluded  by  some  fierce  outbreak  in  this 
turbulent,  surging  mob.  When  England  growled  at 
the  exactions  of  the  Papacy  in  the  years  that  were  to 
follow  the  students  besieged  a  legate  in  the  abbot's 
house  at  Osney.  A  murderous  town  and  gown  row  pre- 
ceded the  opening  of  the  Barons'  War.  "  When  Oxford 
draws  knife."  ran  an  old  rime,  "  England's  soon  at 
strife." 

But  the  turbulence  and  stir  was  a  stir  and  turbulence 
of  life.     A  keen  thirst  for  knowledge,  a  passionate  poetry 


192          TORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

of  devotion,  gathered  thousands  round  the  poorest  scholar 
and  welcomed  the  barefoot  friar.  Edmund  Rich — Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  saint  in  later  days — came 
about  the  time  we  have  reached  to  Oxford,  a  boy  of 
twelve  years  old,  from  a  little  lane  at  Abingdon  that 
still  bears  his  name.  He  found  his  school  in  an  inn  that 
belonged  to  the  abbey  of  Eynsham  where  his  father  had 
taken  refuge  from  the  world.  His  mother  was  a  pious 
woman  of  the  day,  too  poor  to  give  her  boy  much  outfit 
besides  the  hair  shirt  that  he  promised  to  wear  every 
Wednesday  ;  but  Edmund  was  no  poorer  than  his  neigh- 
bors. He  plunged  at  once  into  the  nobler  life  of  the 
place,  its  ardor  for  knowledge,  its  mystical  piety. 
"  Secretly,"  perhaps  at  eventide  when  the  shadows  were 
gathering  in  the  church  of  St.  Mary  and  the  crowd  of 
teachers  and  students  had  left  its  aisles,  the  boy  stood 
before  an  image  of  the  Virgin,  and  placing  a  ring  of  gold 
upon  its  finger  took  Mary  for  his  bride.  Years  of  study, 
broken  by  a  fever  that  raged  among  the  crowded,  noisome 
streets,  brought  the  time  for  completing  his  education  at 
Paris  ;  and  Edmund,  hand  in  hand  with  a  brother  Robert 
of  his,  begged  his  way  as  poor  scholars  were  wont  to  the 
great  school  of  Western  Christendom.  Here  a  damsel, 
heedless  of  his  tonsure,  wooed  him  so  pertinaciously  that 
Edmund  consented  at  last  to  an  assignation  ;  but  when 
he  appeared  it  was  in  company  of  grave  academical  of- 
ficials who,  as  the  maiden  declared  in  the  hour  of  peni- 
tence which  followed,  "straightway  whipped  the  offend- 
ing Eve  out  of  her."  Still  true  to  his  Virgin  bridal, 
Edmund  on  his  return  from  Paris  became  the  most 
popular  of  Oxford  teachers.  It  is  to  him  that  Oxford 
owes  her  first  introduction  to  the  Logic  of  Aristotle.  We 
see  him  in  the  little  room  which  he  hired,  with  the  Virgin's 
chapel  hard  by,  his  gray  gown  reaching  to  his  feet,  ascetic 
in  his  devotion,  falling  asleep  in  lecture  time  after  a 
sleepless  night  of  prayer,  but  gifted  with  a  grace  and 
cheerfulness  of  manner  which  told  of  his  French  training 
and  a  chivalrous  love  of  knowledge  that  let  his  pupils 
pay  what  they  would.  "  Ashes  to  ashes,  Hust  to  dust," 
the  young  tutor  would  say,  a  touch  of  scholarly  pride 


THE   CHARTEB.      1204 — 1291.  193 

perhaps  mingling  with  his  contempt  of  worldly  things, 
as  he  threw  down  the  fee  on  the  dusty  window-ledge 
whence  a  thievish  student  would  sometimes  run  off  with 
it.  But  even  knowledge  brought  its  troubles ;  the  Old 
Testament,  which  with  a  copy  of  the  Decretals  long 
formed  his  sole  library,  frowned  down  upon  a  love  of 
eecular  learning  from  which  Edmund  found  it  hard  to 
wean  himself.  At  last,  in  some  hour  of  dream,  the  form 
of  his  dead  mother  floated  into  the  room  where  the  teacher 
stood  among  his  mathematical  diagrams.  "  What  are 
these  ?  "  she  seemed  to  say  ;  and  seizing  Edmund's  right 
hand,  she  drew  on  the  palm  three  circles  interlaced,  each 
of  which  bore  the  name  of  a  Person  of  the  Christian 
Trinity.  "  Be  these,"  she  cried,  as  the  figure  faded 
away,  "  thy  diagrams  henceforth,  my  son." 

The  story  admirably  illustrates  the  real  character  of 
the  new  training,  and  the  latent  opposition  between  the 
spirit  of  the  Universities  and  the  spirit  of  the  Church. 
The  feudal  and  ecclesiastical  order  of  the  old  mediaeval 
world  were  both  alike  threatened  by  this  power  that 
had  so  strangely  sprung  up  in  the  midst  of  them.  Feu- 
dalism rested  on  local  isolation,  on  the  severance  of 
kingdom  from  kingdom  and  barony  from  barony,  on  the 
distinction  of  blood  and  race,  on  the  supremacy  of 
material  and  brute  force,  on  an  allegiance  determined  by 
accidents  of  place  arid  social  position.  The  University 
on  the  other  hand  was  a  protest  against  this  isolation  of 
man  from  man.  The  smallest  school  was  European  and 
not  local.  Not  merely  every  province  of  France,  but 
every  people  of  Christendom  had  its  place  among  the 
"nations"  of  Paris  or  Padua.  A  common  language, 
the  Latin  tongue,  superseded  within  academical  bounds 
the  warring  tongues  of  Europe.  A  common  intellectual 
kinship  and  rivalry  took  the  place  of  the  petty  strifes 
which  parted  province  from  province  or  realm  from 
realm.  What  Church  and  Empire  had  both  aimed  at 
and  both  failed  in,  the  knitting  of  Christian  nations 
together  into  a  vast  commonwealth,  the  Universities  for 
a  time  actually  did.  Dante  felt  himself  as  little  a 

13 


194  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

stranger  in  the  "  Latin  "  quarter  round  Mont  St.  Gene- 
vi£ve  as  under  the  arches  of  Bologna.  Wandering  Ox- 
ford scholars  carried  the  writings  of  Wyclif  to  the 
libraries  of  Prague.  In  England  the  work  of  provincial 
fusion  was  less  difficult  or  important  than  elsewhere,  but 
even  in  England  work  had  to  be  done.  The  feuds  of 
Northerner  and  Southerner  which  so  long  disturbed  the 
discipline  of  Oxford  witnessed  at  any  rate  to  the  fact 
that  Northerner  and  Southerner  had  at  last  been  brought 
face  to  face  in  its  streets.  And  here  as  elsewhere  the 
spirit  of  national  isolation  was  held  in  check  by  the 
larger  comprehensiveness  of  the  University.  After  the 
dissensions  that  threatened  the  prosperity  of  Paris  in 
the  thirteenth  century  Norman  and  Gascon  mingled 
with  Englishmen  in  Oxford  lecture-halls.  Irish  scholars 
were  foremost  in  the  fray  with  the  legate.  At  a  later 
time  the  rising  of  Owen  Glyndwr  found  hundreds  of 
Welshmen  gathered  round  its  teachers.  And  within 
this  strangely  mingled  mass  society  and  government 
rested  on  a  purely  democratic  basis.  Among  Oxford 
scholars  the  son  of  the  noble  stood  on  precisely  the  same 
footing  with  the  poorest  mendicant.  Wealth,  physical 
strength,  skill  in  arms,  pride  of  ancestry  and  blood,  the 
very  grounds  on  which  feudal  society  rested,  went  for 
nothing  in  the  lecture-room.  The  University  was  a  state 
absolutely  self-governed,  and  whose  citizens  were  ad- 
mitted by  a  purely  intellectual  franchise.  Knowledge 
made  the  "  master."  To  know  more  than  one's  fellows 
was  a  man's  sole  claim  to  be  a  regent  or  "ruler"  in 
these  schools.  And  within  this  intellectual  aristocracy 
all  were  equal.  When  the  .free  commonwealth  of  the 
masters  gathered  in  the  aisles  of  St.  Mary's  all  had  an 
equal  right  to  counsel,  all  had  an  equal  vote  in  the  final 
decision.  Treasury  and  library  were  at  their  complete 
disposal.  It  was  their  voice  that  named  every  officer, 
that  proposed  and  sanctioned  every  statute.  Even  the 
Chancellor,  their  head,  who  had  at  first  been  an  officer 
of  the  Bishop,  became  an  elected  officer  of  their  own. 

If  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  Universities  threatened 
feudalism,  their  spirit  of  intellectual  inquiry  threatened 


THE   CHAETER.      1204 — 1291.  195 

the  Church.  To  all  outer  seeming  they  were  purely  ec- 
clesiastical bodies.  The  wide  extension  which  media val 
usage  gave  to  the  word  "  orders  "  gathered  the  whole 
educated*  world  within  the  pale  of  the  clergy.  What- 
ever might  be  their  age  or  proficiency,  scholar  and 
teacher  alike  ranked  as  clerks,  free  from  lay  respon- 
sibilities or  the  control  of  civil  tribunals,  and  amenable 
only  to  the  rule  of  the  Bishop  and  the  sentence  of  his 
spiritual  courts.  This  ecclesiastical  character  of  the 
University  appeared  in  that  of  its  head.  The  Chancellor, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  at  first  no  officer  of  the  University 
itself,  but  of  the  ecclesiastical  body  under  whose  shadow 
it  had  sprung  into  life.  At  Oxford  he  was  simply  the 
local  officer  of  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  within  whose  im- 
mense diocese  the  University  was  then  situated.  But 
this  identification  in  outer  form  with  the  Church  only 
rendered  more  conspicuous  the  difference  of  spirit  be- 
tween them.  The  sudden  expansion  of  the  field  of  educa- 
tion diminished  the  importance  of  those  purely  ecclesias- 
tical and  theological  studies  which  had  hitherto  absorbed 
the  whole  intellectual  energies  of  mankind.  The  revival 
of  classical  literature,  the  rediscovery  as  it  were  of  an  older 
and  a  greater  world,  the  contact  with  a  larger,  freer  life 
whether  in  mind,  in  society,  or  in  politics  introduced  a 
spirit  of  skepticism,  of  doubt,  of  denial  into  the  realms  of 
unquestioning  belief.  Abelard  claimed  for  reason  a  su- 
premacy over  faith.  Florentine  poets  discussed  with  a 
smile  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Even  to  Dante,  while 
he  censures  these,  Vergil  is  as  sacred  as  Jeremiah.  The 
imperial  ruler  in  whom  the  new  culture  took  its  most 
notable  form,  Frederick  the  Second,  the  "  World's  Won- 
der "  of  his  time,  was  regarded  by  half  Europe  as  no 
better  than  an  infidel.  A  faint  revival  of  physical  science, 
so  long  crushed  as  magic  by  the  dominant  ecclesiasticism, 
brought  Christians  into  perilous  contact  with  the  Moslem 
and  the  Jew.  The  books  of  the  Rabbis  were  no  longer 
an  accursed  thing  to  Roger  Bacon.  The  scholars  of  Cor- 
dova were  no  mere  Paynim  swine  to  Adelard  of  Bath. 
How  slowly  indeed  and  against  what  obstacles  science  won 
its  way  we  know  from  the  witness  of  Roger  Bacon. 


196  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

"  Slowly,"  he  tells  us,  "  has  any  portion  of  the  philosophy 
of  Aristotle  come  into  use  among  the  Latins.  His  Nat- 
ural Philosophy  and  his  Metaphysics,  with  the  Commen- 
taries of  Averroes  and  others,  were  translated  in  my  time, 
and  interdicted  at  Paris  up  to  the  year  of  grace  1237  be- 
cause of  their  assertion  of  the  eternity  of  the  world  and 
of  time  and  because  of  the  book  of  the  divinations  by 
dreams  (which  is  the  third  book,  De  Somniis  et  Vigiliis) 
and  because  of  many  passages  erroneously  translated. 
Even  his  logic  was  slowly  received  and  lectured  on.  For 
St.  Edmund,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  the  first 
in  my  time  who  read  the  Elements  at  Oxford.  And  I 
have  seen  Master  Hugo,  who  first  read  the  book  of  Pos- 
terior Analytics  and  I  have  seen  his  writing.  So  there 
were  but  few,  considering  the  multitude  of  the  Latins, 
who  were  of  any  account  in  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  ; 
nay,  very  few  indeed,  and  scarcely  any  up  to  this  year  of 
grace  1292." 

If  we  pass  from  the  English  University  to  the  English 
Town  we  see  a  progress  as  important  and  hardly  less  in- 
teresting. In  their  origin  our  boroughs  were  utterly 
unlike  those  of  the  rest  of  the  western  world.  The  cities 
of  Italy  and  Provence  had  preserved  the  municipal  insti- 
tutions of  their  Roman  past ;  the  German  towns  had  been 
founded  by  Henry  the  Fowler  with  the  purpose  of  shel- 
tering industry  from  the  feudal  oppression  around  them ; 
the  communes  of  Northern  France  sprang  into  existence 
in  revolt  against  feudal  outrage  within  their  walls.  But 
in  England  the  tradition  of  Rome  passed  utterly  away, 
while  feudal  oppression  was  held  fairly  in  check  by  the 
Crown.  The  English  town  therefore  was  in  its  beginning 
simply  a  piece  of  the  general  country,  organized  and  gov- 
erned precisely  in  the  same  manner  as  the  townships 
around  it.  Its  existence  witnessed  indeed  to  the  need 
which  men  felt  in  those  earlier  times  of  mutual  help  and 
protection.  The  burh  or  borough  was  probably  a  more 
defensible  place  than  the  common  village  ;  it  may  have 
had  a  ditch  or  mound  about  it  instead  of  the  quickset- 
hedge  or  "  tun  "  from  which  the  township  took  its  name. 
But  in  itself  it  was  simply  a  township  or  group  of  town- 


THE   CHAETEE.      1204 — 1291.  .      197 

ships  where  men  clustered  whether  for  trade  or  defence 
more  thickly  than  elsewhere.  The  towns  were  different 
in  the  circumstances  and  date  of  their  rise.  Some  grew 
up  in  the  fortified  camps  of  the  English  invaders.  Some 
dated  from  a  later  occupation  of  the  sacked  and  desolate 
Roman  towns.  Some  clustered  round  the  country  houses 
of  king  and  ealdorman  or  the  walls  of  church  and  mon- 
astery. Towns  like  Bristol  were  the  direct  result  of  trade. 
There  was  the  same  variety  in  the  mode  in  which  the 
various  town  communities  were  formed.  While  the  bulk 
of  them  grew  by  simple  increase  of  population  from  town- 
ship to  town,  larger  boroughs  such  as  York  with  its  "  six 
shires  "  or  London  with  its  wards  and  sokes  and  franchises 
show  how  families  and  groups  of  settlers  settled  down 
side  by  side,  and  claimed  as  they  coalesced,  each  for  itself, 
its  shire  or  share  of  the  town-ground  while  jealously  pre- 
serving its  individual  life  within  the  town-community. 
But  strange  as  these  aggregations  might  be,  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  borough  which  resulted  from  them  was  simply 
that  of  the  people  at  large.  Whether  we  regard  it  as  a 
township,  or  rather  from  its  size  as  a  hundred  or  collection 
of  townships,  the  obligations  of  the  dwellers  within  its 
bounds  were  those  of  the  townships  round,  to  keep  fence 
and  trench  in  good  repair,  to  send  a  contingent  to  the 
fyrd,  and  a  reeve  and  four  men  to  the  hundred  court  and 
shire  court.  As  in  other  townships  land  was  a  necessary 
accompaniment  of  freedom.  The  landless  man  who 
dwelled  in  a  borough  had  no  share  in  its  corporate  life ; 
for  purposes  of  government  or  property  the  town  con- 
sisted simply  of  the  landed  proprietors  within  its  bounds. 
The  common  lands  which  are  still  attached  to  many  of 
our  boroughs  take  us  back  to  a  time  when  each  township 
lay  within  a  ring  or  mark  of  open  ground  which  served 
at  once  as  boundary  and  pasture  land.  Each  of  the  four 
wards  of  York  had  its  common  pasture  ;  Oxford  has  still 
its  own  "  Portmeadow.'' 

The  inner  rule  of  the  borough  lay  as  in  the  townships 
about  it  in  the  hands  of  its  own  freemen,  gathered  in 
"  borough-moot  "  or  "  portmannimote."  But  the  social 
change  brought  .about  by  the  Danish  wars,  the  legal  re- 


198  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

quirement  that  each  man  should  have  a  lord,  affected  the 
towns  as  it  affected  the  rest  of  the  country.  Some  passed 
into  the  hands  of  great  thegns  near  to  them  ;  the  bulk 
became  known  as  in  the  demesne  of  the  king.  A  new 
officer,- the  lord's  or  king's  reeve,  was  a  sign  of  this  rev- 
olution. It  was  the  reeve  who  now  summoned  the 
borough-moot  and  administered  justice  in  it ;  it  was  he 
who  collected  the  lord's  dues  or  annual  rent  of  the  town, 
and  who  exacted  the  services  it  owed  to  its  lord.  To 
modern  eyes  these  services  would  imply  almost  complete 
subjection.  When  Leicester,  for  instance,  passed  from 
the  hands  of  the  Conqueror  into  those  of  its  Earls,  its 
townsmen  were  bound  to  reap  their  lord's  corn-crops,  to 
grind  at  his  mill,  to  redeem  their  strayed  cattle  from  his 
pound.  The  great  forest  around  was  the  Earl's,  and  it 
was  only  out  of  his  grace  that  the  little  borough  could 
drive  its  swine  into  the  woods  or  pasture  its  cattle  in  the 
glades.  The  justice  and  government  of  a  town  lay 
wholly  in  its  master's  hands ;  he  appointed  its  bailiffs, 
received  the  fines  and  forfeitures  of  his  tenants,  and  the 
fees  and  tolls  of  their  markets  and  fairs.  But  in  fact 
when  once  these  dues  were  paid  and  their  services 
rendered  the  English  townsman  was  practically  free.  His 
rights  were  as  rigidly  defined  by  custom  as  those  of  his 
lord.  Property  and  person  alike  were  secured  against 
arbitrary  seizure.  He  could  demand  a  fair  trial  on  any 
charge,  and  even  if  justice  was  administered  by  his 
master's  reeve  it  was  administered  in  the  presence  and 
with  the  assent  of  his  fellow-townsmen.  The  bell 
which  swung  out  from  the  town  tower  gathered  the 
burgesses  to  a  common  meeting,  where  they  could  exer- 
cise rights  of  free  speech  and  free  deliberation  on  their 
own  affairs.  Their  merchant-gild  over  its  ale-feast  regu- 
lated trade,  distributed  the  sums  due  from  the  town 
among  the  different  burgesses,  looked  to  the  due  repairs 
of  gate  and  wall,  and  acted  in  fact  pretty  much  the  same 
part  as  a  town-council  of  to-day. 

The  merchant-gild  was  the  outcome  of  a  tendency  to 
closer  association  which  found  support  in  those  principles 
of  mutual  aid  and  mutual  restraint  that  lay  at  the  base 


THE   CHAETEE.      1204 — 1291.  199 

of  our  old  institutions.  Gilds  or  clubs  for  religious, 
charitable,  or  social  purposes  were  common  throughout 
the  country,  and  especially  common  in  boroughs,  where 
men  clustered  more  thickly  together.  Each  formed  a 
sort  of  artificial  family.  An  oath  of  mutual  fidelity 
among  its  members  was  substituted  for  the  tie  of  blood, 
while  the  gild-feast,  held  once  a  month  in  the  common 
hall,  replaced  the  gathering  of  the  kinsfolk  round  their 
family  hearth.  But  within  this  new  family  the  aim  of 
the  gild  was  to  establish  a  mutual  responsibility  as  close 
as  that  of  the  old.  "  Let  all  share  the  same  lot,"  ran  its 
law;  "if  any  misdo,  let  all  bear  it."  A  member  could 
look  for  aid  from  his  gild-brothers  in  atoning  for  guilt  in- 
curred by  mishap.  He  could  call  on  them  for  assistance 
in  case  of  violence  or  wrong.  If  falsely  accused  they  ap- 
peared in  court  as  his  compurgators,  if  poor  they  sup- 
ported, and  when  dead  they  buried  him.  On  the  other 
hand  he  was  responsible  to  them,  as  they  were  to  the 
State,  for  order  and  obedience  to  the  laws.  A  wrong  of 
brother  against  brother  was  also  a  wrong  against  the 
general  body  of  the  gild  and  was  punished  by  fine  or  in 
the  last  resort  by  an  expulsion  which  left  the  offender  a 
"  lawless  "  man  and  an  outcast.  The  one  difference  be- 
tween these  gilds  in  country  and  town  was  this,  that  in 
the  latter  case  from  their  close  local  neighborhood  they 
tended  inevitably  to  coalesce.  Under  jEthelstan  the 
London  gilds  united  into  one  for  the  purpose  of  carrying 
out  more  effectually  their  common  aims,  and  at  a  later 
time  we  find  the  gilds  of  Berwick  enacting  "  that  where 
many  bodies  are  found  side  by  side  in  one  place  they 
may  become  one,  and  have  one  will,  and  in  the  dealings 
of  one  with  another  have  a  strong  and  hearty  love."  The 
process  was  probably  a  long  and  difficult  one,  for  the 
brotherhoods  naturally  differed  much  in  social  rank,  and 
even  after  the  union  was  effected  we  see  traces  of  the 
separate  existence  to  a  certain  extent  of  some  one  or 
more  of  the  wealthier  or  more  aristocratic  gilds.  In 
London  for  instance  the  Knighten-gild  which  seems  to 
have  stood  at  the  head  of  its  fellows  retained  for  a  long 
time  its  separate  property,  while  its  Alderman — as  the 


200  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

chief  officer  of  each  gild  was  called — became  the  Alder- 
man of  the  united  gild  of  the  whole  city.  In  Canterbury 
we  find  a  similar  gild  of  Thanes  from  which  the  chief 
officers  of  the  town  seem  commonly  to  have  been  selected. 
Imperfect  however  as  the  union  might  be,  when  once  it 
was  effected  the  town  passed  from  a  mere  collection  of 
brotherhoods  into  a  powerful  community,  far  more  effect- 
ually organized  than  in  the  loose  organization  of  the 
township,  and  whose  character  was  inevitably  deter- 
mined by  the  circumstances  of  its  origin.  In  their  begin- 
nings our  boroughs  seem  to  have  been  mainly  gatherings 
of  persons  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits  ;  the  first 
Dooms  of  London  provide  especially  for  the  recovery 
of  cattle  belonging  to  the  citizens.  But  as  the  increas- 
ing security  of  the  country  invited  the  farmer  or  the 
landowner  to  settle  apart  in  his  own  fields,  and  the  growth 
of  estate  and  trade  told  on  the  towns  themselves,  the  dif- 
ference between  town  and  country  became  more  sharply 
defined.  London  of  course  took  the  lead  in  this  new  de- 
velopment of  civic  life.  Even  in  jEthelstan's  day  every 
London  merchant  who  had  made  three  long  voyages  on 
his  own  account  ranked  as  a  Thegn.  Its  "  lithsmen,"  or 
shipman's-gild,  were  of  sufficient  importance  under  Har- 
thacnut  to  figure  in  the  election  of  a  king,  and  its  prin- 
cipal street  still  tells  of  the  rapid  growth  of  trade  in  its 
name  of  '  Cheap-side  '  or  the  bargaining  place.  But  at 
the  Norman  Conquest  the  commercial  tendency  had  be- 
come universal.  The  name  given  to  the  united  brother- 
hood in  a  borough  is  in  almost  every  case  no  longer  that 
of  the  '  town-gild,'  but  of  the  '  merchant-gild.' 

This  social  change  in  the  character  of  the  townsmen 
produced  important  results  in  the  character  of  their 
municipal  institutions.  In  becoming  a  merchant-gild  the 
body  of  citizens  who  formed  the  "  town  "  enlarged  their 
powers  of  civic  legislation  by  applying  them  to  the  con- 
trol of  their  internal  trade.  It  became  their  special  busi- 
ness to  obtain  from  the  crown  or  from  their  lords  wider 
commercial  privileges,  rights  of  coinage,  grants  of  fairs, 
and  exemption  from  tolls,  while  within  the  town  itself 
they  framed  regulations  as  to  the  sale  and  quality  of 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  201 

goods,  the  control  of  markets,  and  the  recovery  of  debts. 
It  was  only  by  slow  and  difficult  advances  that  each  step 
in  this  securing  of  privilege  was  won.  Still  it  went 
steadily  on.  Whenever  we  get  a  glimpse  of  the  inner 
history  of  an  English  town  we  find  the  same  peaceful 
revolution  in  progress,  services  disappearing  through 
disuse  or  omission,  while  privileges  and  immunities  are 
being  purchased  in  hard  cash.  The  lord  of  the  town, 
whether  he  were  king,  baron,  or  abbot,  was  commonly 
thriftless  or  poor,  and  the  capture  of  a  noble,  or  the  cam- 
paign of  a  sovereign,  or  the  building  of  some  new  min- 
ster by  a  prior,  brought  about  an  appeal  to  the  thrifty 
burghers,  who  were  ready  to  fill  again  their  master's 
treasury  at  the  price  of  the  strip  of  parchment  which 
gave  them  freedom  of  trade,  of  justice,  and  of  govern- 
ment. In  the  silent  growth  and  elevation  of  the  Eng- 
lish people  the  boroughs  thus  led  the  way.  Unnoticed 
and  despised  by  prelate  and  noble  they  preserved  or  won 
back  again  the  full  tradition  of  Teutonic  liberty.  The 
right  of  self-government,  the  right  of  free  speech  in  free 
meeting,  the  right  to  equal  justice  at  the  hands  of  one's 
equals,  were  brought  safely  across  ages  of  tyranny  by  the 
burghers  and  shopkeepers  of  the  towns.  In  the  quiet 
quaintly-named  streets,  in  town-mead  and  market-place, 
in  the  lord's  mill  beside  the  stream,  in  the  bell  that 
swung  out  its  summons  to  the  crowded  borough-mote,  in 
merchant-gild,  and  church-gild,  lay  the  life  of  English- 
men who  were  doing  more  than  knight  and  baron  to 
make  England  what  she  is,  the  life  of  their  home  and 
their  trade,  of  their  sturdy  battle  with  oppression,  their 
steady,  ceaseless  struggle  for  right  and  freedom. 

London  stood  first  among  English  towns,  and  the  privi- 
leges which  its  citizens  won  became  precedents  for  the 
burghers  of  meaner  boroughs.  Even  at  the  Conquest  its 
power  and  wealth  secured  it  a  full  recognition  of  all  its 
ancient  privileges  from  the  Conqueror.  In  one  way  in- 
deed it  profited  by  the  revolution  which  laid  England  at 
the  feet  of  the  stranger.  One  immediate  result  of  Wil- 
liam's success  was  an  immigration  into  England  from  the 
Continent.  A  peaceful  invasion  of  the  Norman  traders 


202  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

followed  quick  on  the  invasion  of  the  Norman  soldiery. 
Every  Norman  noble  as  he  quartered  himself  upon  Eng- 
lish lands,  every  Norman  abbot  as  he  entered  his  English 
cloister,  gathered  French  artists,  French  shopkeepers, 
French  domestics  about  him.  Round  the  Abbey  of  Bat- 
tle which  William  founded  on  the  site  of  his  great  vic- 
tory "  Gilbert  the  Foreigner,  Gilbert  the  Weaver,  Benet 
the  Steward,  Hugh  the  Secretary,  Baldwin  the  Tailor," 
dwelt  mixed  with  the  English  tenantry.  But  nowhere 
did  these  immigrants  play  so  notable  a  part  as  in  Lon- 
don. The  Normans  had  had  mercantile  establishments 
in  London  as  early  as  the  reign  of  ^Ethelred,  if  not  of 
Eadgar.  Such  settlements  however  naturally  formed 
nothing  more  than  a  trading  colony  like  the  colony  of 
the  "Emperor's  Men,"  or  Easterlings.  But  with  the 
Conquest  their  number  greatly  increased.  "  Many  of 
the  citizens  of  Rouen  and  Caen  passed  over  thither,  pre- 
ferring to  be  dwellers  in  this  city,  inasmuch  as  it  was 
fitter  for  their  trading  and  better  stored  with  the  mer- 
chandise in  which  they  were  wont  to  traffic."  The 
status  of  these  traders  indeed  had  wholly  changed.  They 
could  no  longer  be  looked  upon  as  strangers  in  cities 
which  had  passed  under  the  Norman  rule.  In  some 
cases,  as  at  Norwich,  the  French  colony  isolated  itself  in 
a  separate  French  town,  side  by  side  with  the  English 
borough.  But  in  London  it  seems  to  have  taken  at  once 
the  position  of  a  governing  class.  Gilbert  Beket,  the 
father  of  the  famous  Archbishop,  was  believed  in  later 
days  to  have  been  one  of  the  portreeves  of  London,  the 
predecessors  of  its  mayors  ;  he  held  in  Stephen's  time  a 
large  property  in  houses  within  the  walls,  and  a  proof  of 
his  civic  importance  was  preserved  in  the  annual  visit  of 
each  newly-elected  chief  magistrate  to  his  tomb  in  a  little 
chapel  which  he  had  founded  in  the  churchyard  of  St. 
Paul's.  Yet  Gilbert  was  one  of  the  Norman  strangers 
who  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  Conqueror  ;  he  was  by 
birth  a  burgher  of  Rouen,  as  his  wife  was  of  a  burgher 
family  from  Caen. 

It  was  partly  to  this  infusion  of  foreign  blood,  partly 
no  doubt  to  the  long  internal  peace  and  order  secured 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  203 

by  the  Norman  rule,  that  London  owed  the  wealth  and 
importance  to  which  it  attained  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  the  First.  The  charter  which  Henry  granted  it 
became  a  model  for  lesser  boroughs.  The  King  yielded 
its  citizens  the  right  of  justice ;  each  townsman  could 
claim  to  be  tried  by  his  fellow-townsmen  in  the  town- 
court  or  hustings  whose  sessions  took  place  every  week. 
They  were  subject  only  to  the  old  English  trial  by  oath, 
and  exempt  from  the  trial  by  battle  which  the  Normans 
introduced.  Their  trade  was  protected  from  toll  or  ex- 
action over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  The 
King  however  still  nominated  in  London  as  elsewhere 
the  portreeve,  or  magistrate  of  the  town,  nor  were  the 
citizens  as  yet  united  together  in  a  commune  or  corpora- 
tion. But  an  imperfect  civic  organization  existed  in  the 
"  wards  "  or  quarters  of  the  town,  each  governed  by  its 
own  alderman  and  in  the  "gilds"  or  voluntary  associa- 
tions of  merchants  or  traders  which  ensured  order  and 
mutual  protection  for  their  members.  Loose  too  as  these 
bonds  may  seem,  they  were  drawn  firmly  together  by  the 
older  English  traditions  of  freedom  which  the  towns  pre- 
served. The  London  burgesses  gathered  in  their  town- 
mote  when  the  bell  swung  out  from  the  bell-tower  of  St. 
Paul's  to  deliberate  freely  on  their  own  affairs  under  the 
presidenc}"  of  their  alderman.  Here  too  they  mustered 
in  arms  if  danger  threatened  the  city,  and  delivered  the 
town-banner  to  their  captain,  the  Norman  baron  Fitz- 
Walter,  to  lead  them  against  the  enemy. 

Few  boroughs  had  as  yet  attained  to  such  power  as 
this,  but  the  instance  of  Oxford  shows  how  the  freedom 
of  London  told  on  the  general  advance  of  English  towns. 
In  spite  of  antiquarian  fancies  it  is  certain  that  no  town 
had  arisen  on  the  site  of  Oxford  for  centuries  after  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Roman  legions  from  the  isle  of  Britain. 
Though  the  monastery  of  St.  Frideswide  rose  in  the  tur- 
moil of  the  eighth  century  on  the  slope  which  led  down 
to  a  ford  across  the  Thames,  it  is  long  before  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  borough  that  must  have  grown  up  under 
its  walls.  The  first  definite  evidence  for  its  existence 
lies  in  a  brief  entry  of  the  English  Chronicle  which  re- 


204  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

calls  its  seizure  by  Eadward  the  Elder,  but  the  form  of 
this  entry  shows  that  the  town  was  already  a  consider- 
able one,  and  in  the  last  wrestle  of  England  with  the 
Dane  its  position  on  the  borders  of  Mercia  and  Wessex 
combined  with  its  command  of  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Thames  to  give  it  military  and  political  importance.  Of 
the  life  of  its  burgesses  however  we  still  know  little  or 
nothing.  The  names  of  its  parishes,  St.  Aldate,  St. 
Ebbe,  St.  Mildred,  St.  Edmund,  show  how  early 
church  after  church  gathered  round  the  earlier  town- 
church  of  St.  Martin.  But  the  men  of  the  little  town 
remain  dim  to  us.  Their  town-mote,  or  the  "Port- 
mannimote "  as  it  was  called,  which  was  held  in  the 
churchyard  of  St.  Martin,  still  lives  in  a  shadow  of  its 
older  self  as  the  Freeman's  Common  Hall — their  town- 
mead  is  still  the  Port-meadow.  But  it  is  only  by  later 
charters  or  the  record  of  Doomsday  that  wo  see  them 
going  on  pilgrimage  to  the  shrines  of  Winchester,  or 
chaffering  in  their  market-place,  or  judging  and  law- 
making  in  their  hustings,  their  merchant-gild  regulating 
trade,  their  reeve  gathering  his  king's  dues  of  tax  or 
money  or  marshalling  his  troop  of  burghers  for  the  king's 
wars,  their  boats  paying  toll  of  a  hundred  herrings  in 
Lent-tide  to  the  Abbot  of  Abingdon,  as  they  floated 
down  the  Thames  towards  London. 

The  number  of  houses  marked  waste  in  the  survey 
marks  the  terrible  suffering  of  Oxford  in  the  Norman 
Conquest :  but  the  ruin  was  soon  repaired,  and  the  erec 
tion  of  its  castle,  the  rebuilding  of  its  churches,  the  plant- 
ing of  a  Jewry  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  showed  in  what 
various  ways  the  energy  of  its  new  masters  was  giving  an 
impulse  to  its  life.  It  is  a  proof  of  the  superiority  of  the 
Hebrew  dwellings  to  the  Christian  houses  about  them  that 
each  of  the  later  town-halls  of  the  borough  had,  before 
their  expulsion,  been  houses  of  Jews.  Nearly  all  the 
larger  dwelling  houses  in  fact  which  were  subsequently 
converted  into  academic  halls  bore  traces  of  the  same 
origin  in  names  such  as  Moysey's  Hall,  Lombard's  Hall, 
or  Jacob's  Hall.  The  Jewish  houses  were  abundant,  for 
besides  the  greater  Jewry  in  the  heart  of  it,  there  was  a 


THE  CHAETEE.      1204 — 1291.  205 

lesser  Jewry  scattered  over  its  southern  quarter,  and  we 
can  hardly  doubt  that  this  abundance  of  substantial 
buildings  in  the  town  was  at  least  one  of  the  causes  which 
drew  teachers  and  scholars  within  its  walls.  The  Jewry, 
a  town  within  a  town,  lay  here  as  elsewhere  isolated  and 
exempt  from  the  common  justice,  the  common  life  and 
self-government  of  the  borough.  On  all  but  its  eastern 
side  too  the  town  was  hemmed  in  by  jurisdictions  in- 
dependent of  its  own.  The  precincts  of  the  Abbey  of 
Osney,  the  wide  "  bailey "  of  the  Castle,  bounded  it 
narrowly  on  the  west.  To  the  north,  stretching  away 
beyond  the  little  church  of  St.  Giles,  lay  the  fields  of  the 
ro}ral  manor  of  Beaumont.  The  Abbot  of  Abingdon, 
whose  woods  of  Cumnor  and  Bagley  closed  the  southern 
horizon,  held  his  leet-court  in  the  hamlet  of  Grampound 
be}rond  the  bridge.  Nor  was  the  whole  space  within  the 
walls  subject  to  the  self-government  of  the  citizens.  The 
Jewry  had  a  rule  and  law  of  its  own.  Scores  of  house- 
holders, dotted  over  street  and  lane,  were  tenants  of  castle 
or  abbey  and  paid  no  suit  or  service  at  the  borough  court. 
But  within  these  narrow  bounds  and  amidst  these 
various  obstacles  the  spirit  of  municipal  liberty  lived  a 
life  the  more  intense  that  it  was  so  closely  cabined  and 
confined.  Nowhere  indeed  was  the  impulse  which  London 
was  giving  likely  to  tell  with  greater  force.  The  "  barge- 
men "  of  Oxford  were  connected  even  before  the  Con- 
quest with  the  "  boatmen,"  or  shippers,  of  the  capital. 
In  both  cases  it  is  probable  that  the  bodies  bearing  these 
names  represented  what  is  known  as  the  merchant-gild 
of  the  town.  Royal  recognition  enables  us  to  trace  the 
merchant-gild  of  Oxford  from  the  time  of  Henry  the 
First.  Even  then  lands,  islands,  pastures  belonged  to  it, 
and  amongst  them  the  same  Port-meadow  which  is  famil- 
iar to  Oxford  men  pulling  lazily  on  a  summer's  noon  to 
Godstow.  The  connexion.between  the  two  gilds  was  pri- 
marily one  of  trade.  "  In  the  time  of  King  Eadward  and 
Abbot  Ordric"  the  channel  of  the  Thames  beneath  the 
walls  of  the  Abbey  of  Abingdon  became  so  blocked  up 
that  boats  could  scarce  pass  as  far  as  Oxford,  and  it  was 
at  the  joint  prayer  of  the  burgesses  of  London  and  Ox- 


206  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ford  that  the  abbot  dug  a  new  channel  through  the  mea- 
dow to  the  south  of  his  church.  But  by  the  time  of 
Henry  the  Second  closer  bonds  than  this  linked  the  two 
cities  together.  In  case  'of  any  doubt  or  contest  about 
judgments  in  their  own  court  the  burgesses  of  Oxford 
were  empowered  to  refer  the  matter  to  the  decision  of 
London,  "  and  whatsoever  the  citizens  of  London  shall 
adjudge  in  such  cases  shall  be  deemed  right."  The  judi- 
cial usages,  the  municipal  rights  of  each  city  were  as- 
similated by  Henry's  charter.  "  Of  whatsoever  matter 
the  men  of  Oxford  be  put  in  plea,  they  shall  deraign 
themselves  according  to  the  law  and  custom  of  the  city 
of  London  and  not  otherwise,  because  they  and  the  citi- 
zens of  London  are  of  one  and  the  same  custom,  law,  and 
liberty." 

A  legal  connexion  such  as  this  could  hardly  fail  to  bring 
with  it  an  identity  of  municipal  rights.  Oxford  had 
already  passed  through  the  earlier  steps  of  her  advance 
towards  municipal  freedom  before  the  conquest  of  the 
Norman.  Her  burghers  assembled  in  their  own  Portman- 
nimote,  and  their  dues  to  the  crown  were  assessed  at  a 
fixed  sum  of  money  or  coin.  But  the  formal  definition  of 
their  rights  dates,  as  in  the  case  of  London,  from  the 
time  of  Henry  the  First.  The  customs  and  exemptions 
of  its  townsmen  were  confirmed  by  Henry  the  Second  "  as 
ever  they  enjoyed  them  in  the  time  of  Henry  my  grand- 
father and  in  like  manner  as  my  citizens  of  London  hold 
them."  By  this  date  the  town  had  attained  entire  ju- 
dicial and  commercial  freedom,  and  liberty  of  external 
commerce  was  secured  by  the  exemption  of  its  citizens 
from  toll  on  the  king's  lands.  Complete  independence 
was  reached  when  a  charter  of  John  substituted  a  mayor 
of  the  town's  own  choosing  for  the  reeve  or  bailiff  of  the 
crown.  But  dry  details  such  as  these  tell  little  of  the 
quick  pulse  of  popular  life  that  beat  in  the  thirteenth 
century  through  such  a  community  as  that  of  Oxford. 
The  church  of  St.  Martin  in  the  very  heart  of  it,  at  the 
"  Quatrevoix  "  or  Carfax  where  its  four  streets  met,  was 
the  centre  of  the  city  life.  The  town-mote  was  held  in 
its  churchyard.  Justice  was  administered  ere  yet  a  town- 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  207 

hall  housed  the  infant  magistracy  by  mayor  or  bailiff  sit- 
ting beneath  a  low-pent  house,  the  "  penniless  bench  "  of 
later  days,  outside  its  eastern  wall.  Its  bell  summoned 
the  burghers  to  council  or  arms.  Around  the  church  the 
trade-gilds  were  ranged  as  in  some  vast  en  campment.  To 
the  south  of  it  lay  Spicery  and  Vintnery,  the  quarter  of 
the  richer  burgesses.  Fish-street  fell  noisily  down  to 
the  bridge  and  the  ford.  The  Corn-market  occupied  then 
as  now  the  street  which  led  to  Northgate.  The  stalls  of 
the  butchers  stretched  along  the  "  Butcher-row,"  which 
formed  the  road  to  the  bailey  and  the  castle.  Close  be- 
neath the  church  lay  a  nest  of  huddled  lanes,  broken  by 
a  stately  synagogue,  and  traversed  from  time  to  time  by 
the  yellow  gaberdine  of  the  Jew.  Soldiers  from  the 
castle  rode  clashing  through  the  narrow  streets;  the 
bells  of  Osney  clanged  from  the  swampy  meadows;  pro- 
cessions of  pilgrims  wound  through  gates  and  lane  to  the 
shrine  of  St.  Frideswide.  Frays  were  common  enough  ; 
now  the  sack  of  a  Jew's  house ;  now  burgher  drawing 
knife  on  burgher;  no  wan  outbreak  of  the  young  student 
lads  who  were  growing  every  day  in  numbers  and  audacity. 
But  as  yet  the  town  was  well  in  hand.  The  clang  of  the 
city  bell  called  every  citizen  to  his  door ;  the  call  of  the 
mayor  brought  trade  after  trade  with  bow  in  hand  and 
banners  flying  to  enforce  the  king's  peace. 

The  advance  of  towns  which  had  grown  up  not  on  the 
royal  domain  but  around  abbey  or  castle  was  slower  and 
more  difficult.  The  story  of  St.  Ednmndsbury  shows  how 
gradual  was  the  transition  from  pure  serfage  to  an  im- 
perfect freedom.  Much  that  had  been  plough-land  here 
in  the  Confessor's  time  was  covered  with  houses  by  the 
time  of  Henry  the  Second.  The  building  of  the  great 
abbey-church  drew  its  craftsmen  and  masons  to  mingle 
with  the  ploughmen  and  reapers  of  the  Abbot's  domain. 
The  troubles  of  the  time  helped  here  as  elsewhere  the 
progress  of  the  town  ;  serfs,  fugitives  from  justice  or 
their  lord,  the  trader,  the  Jew,  naturally  sought  shelter 
under  the  strong  hand  of  St.  Edmund.  But  the  settlers 
were  wholly  at  the  Abbot's  mercy.  Not  a  settler  but 
was  bound  to  pay  his  pence  to  the  Abbot's  treasury,  to 


208  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

plough  a  rod  of  his  land,  to  reap  in  his  harvest-field,  to 
fold  his  sheep  in  the  Abbey  folds,  to  help  bring  the  annual 
catch  of  eels  from  the  Abbey  waters.  Within  the  four 
crosses  that  bounded  the  Abbey's  domain  land  and  water 
were  his;  the  cattle  of  the  townsmen  paid  for  their 
pasture  on  the  common  ;  if  the  fullers  refused  the  loan  of 
their  cloth  the  cellarer  would  refuse  the  use  of  the  stream 
and  seize  their  looms  wherever  he  found  them.  No  toll 
might  be  levied  from  tenants  of  the  Abbey  farms,  and  cus- 
tomers had  to  wait  before  shop  and  stall  till  the  buyers  of 
the  Abbey  had  had  the  pick  of  the  market.  There  was 
little  chance  of  redress,  for  if  burghers  complained  in  folk- 
mote  it  was  before  the  Abbot's  officers  that  its  meeting 
was  held ;  if  they  appealed  to  the  alderman  he  was  the 
Abbot's  nominee  and  received  the  horn,  the  symbol  of  his 
office,  at  the  Abbot's  hands.  Like  all  the  greater  revo 
lutions  of  society,  the  advance  from  this  mere  serfage  was  a 
silent  one  ;  indeed  its  more  galling  instances  of  oppression 
seemed  to  have  slipped  unconsciously  away.  Some,  like 
the  eel-fishing,  were  commuted  for  an  easy  rent ;  others, 
like  the  slavery  of  the  fullers  and  the  toll  of  flax,  simply 
disappeared.  By  usage,  by  omission,  by  downright  for- 
getfulness,  here  by  a  little  struggle,  there  by  a  present  to 
a  needjr  abbot,  the  town  won  freedom. 

But  progress  was  not  always  unconscious,  and  one  in- 
cident in  the  history  of  St.  Edmundsbury  is  remarkable, 
not  merely  as  indicating  the  advance  of  law,  but  yet  more 
as  marking  the  part  which  a  new  moral  sense  of  man's 
right  to  equal  justice  was  to  play  in  the  general  advance 
of  the  realm.  Rude  as  the  borough  was,  it  possessed  the 
right  of  meeting  in  full  assembly  of  the  townsmen  for 
government  and  law.  Justice  was  administered  in  pres- 
ence of  the  burgesses,  and  the  accused  acquitted  or  con- 
demned by  the  oath  of  his  neighbors.  Without  the 
borough  bounds  however  the  system  of  Norman  judica- 
ture prevailed  ;  and  the  rural  tenants  who  did  suit  and 
service  at  the  Cellarer's  court  were  subjected  to  the  trial 
by  battle.  The  execution  of  a  farmer  named  Kebel  who 
came  under  this  feudal  jurisdiction  brought  the  two  sys- 
tems into  vivid  contrast.  Kebel  seems  to  have  been  guilt- 


THE   CHAKTEE.      1204—1291.  209 

less  of  the  crime  laid  to  his  charge;  but  the  duel  went 
against  him  and  he  was  hung  just  without  the  gates. 
The  taunts  of  the  townsmen  woke  his  fellow  farmers  to  a 
sense  of  wrong.  "  Had  Kebel  been  a  dweller  within  the 
borough,"  said  the  burgesses,  "  he  would  have  got  his  ac- 
quittal from  the  oaths  of  his  neighbors,  as  our  liberty  is;" 
and  even  the  monks  were  moved  to  a  decision  that  their 
tenants  should  enjoy  equal  freedom  and  justice  with  the 
townsmen.  The  franchise  of  the  town  was  extended  to 
the  rural  possessions  of  the  Abbey  without  it;  the  farmers 
"came  to  the  toll-house,  were  written  in  the  alderman's 
toll,  and  paid  the  town-penny."  A  chance  story  pre- 
served in  a  charter  of  later  date  shows  the  same  struggle 
for  justice  going  on  in  a  greater  town.  At  Leicester  the 
trial  by  compurgation,  the  rough  predecessor  of  trial  by 
jury,  had  been  abolished  by  the  Earls  in  favor  of  trial  by 
battle.  The  aim  of  the  burgesses  was  to  regain  their 
old  justice,  and  in  this  a  touching  incident  at  last  made 
them  successful.  "  It  chanced  that  two  kinsmen,  Nicholas 
the  son  of  Aeon  and  Geoffrey  the  son  of  Nicholas,  waged 
a  duel  about  a  certain  piece  of  land  concerning  which  a 
dispute  had  arisen  between  them  ;  and  they  fought  from 
the  first  to  the  ninth  hour,  each  conquering  by  turns. 
Then  one  of  them  fleeing  from  the  other  till  he  came  to  a 
certain  little  pit,  as  he  stood  on  the  brink  of  the  pit  and 
was  about  to  fall  therein,  his  kinsman  said  to  him  '  Take 
care  of  the  pit,  turnback,  lest  thou  shouldest  fall  into  it.' 
Thereat  so  much  clamor  and  noise  was  made  by  the 
bystanders  and  those  who  were  sitting  around  that  the 
Earl  heard  these  clamors  as  far  off  as  the  castle,  and  he 
enquired  of  some  how  it  was  there  was  such  a  clamor,  and 
answer  was  made  to  him  that  two  kinsmen  were  fighting 
about  a  certain  piece  of  ground,  and  that  one  had  fled 
till  he  reached  a  certain  little  pit,  and  that  as  he  stood 
over  the  pit  and  was  about  to  fall  into  it  the  other  warned 
him.  Then  the  townsmen  being  moved  with  pity,  made 
a  covenant  with  the  Earl  that  they  should  give  him  three- 
pence yearly  for  each  house  in  the  High  Street  that  had 
a  gable,  on  condition  that  he  should  grant  to  them  that 
the  twenty-four  jurors  who  were  in  Leicester  from  ancient 

14 


210  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

times  should  from  that  time  forward  discuss  and  decide 
all  pleas  they  might  have  among  themselves." 

At  the  time  we  have  reached  this  struggle  for  emanci- 
pation was  nearly  over.  The  larger  towns  had  secured 
the  privilege  of  self-government,  the  administration  of 
justice,  and  the  control  of  their  own  trade.  The  reigns 
of  Richard  and  John  mark  the  date  in  our  municipal 
history  at  which  towns  began  to  acquire  the  right  of 
electing  their  own  chief  magistrate,  the  Portreeve  or 
Mayor,  who  had  till  then  been  a  nominee  of  the  crown. 
But  with  the  close  of  this  outer  struggle  opened  an  inner 
struggle  between  the  various  classes  of  the  townsmen 
themselves.  The  growth  of  wealth  and  industry  was 
bringing  with  it  a  vast  increase  of  population.  The 
mass  of  the  new  settlers,  composed  as  they  were  of 
escaped  serfs,  of  traders  without  landed  holdings,  of 
families  who  had  lost  their  original  lot  in  the  borough, 
and  generally  of  the  artisans  and  the  poor,  had  no  part 
in  the  actual  life  of  the  town.  The  right  of  trade  and  of 
the  regulation  of  trade  in  common  with  all  other  forms 
of  jurisdiction  lay  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the  landed 
burghers  whom  we  have  described.  By  a  natural  process 
too  their  superiority  in  wealth  produced  a  fresh  division 
between  the  "  burghers  "  of  the  merchant-gild  and  the 
unenfranchised  mass  around  them.  The  same  change 
which  severed  at  Florence  the  seven  Greater  Arts  or 
trades  from  the  fourteen  Lesser  Arts,  and  which  raised 
the  three  occupations  of  banking,  the  manufacture  and 
the  dyeing  of  cloth,  to  apposition  of  superiority  even 
within  the  privileged  circle  of  the  seven,  told  though 
with  less  force  on  the  English  boroughs.  The  burghers 
of  the  merchant-gild  gradually  concentrated  themselves 
on  the  greater  operations  of  commerce,  on  trades  which 
required  a  larger  capital,  while  the  meaner  employments 
of  general  traffic  were  abandoned  to  their  poorer  neigh- 
bors. This  advance  in  the  division  of  labor  is  marked  by 
such  severances  as  we  note  in  the  thirteenth  century  of 
the  cloth  merchant  from  the  tailor  or  the  leather  mer- 
chant from  the  butcher. 

But  the  result  of  this  severance  was  all  important  in 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  211 

% 

its  influence  on  the  constitution  of  our  towns.  The 
members  of  the  trades  thus  abandoned  by  the  wealthier 
burghers  formed  themselves  into  Craft-gilds  which  soon 
rose  into  dangerous  rivalry  with  the  original  Merchant- 
gild  of  the  town.  A  seven  years'  apprenticeship  formed 
the  necessary  prelude  to  full  membership  of  these  trade- 
gilds.  Their  regulations  were  of  the  minutest  character; 
the  quality  and  value  of  work  were  rigidly  prescribed, 
the  hours  of  toil  fixed  "  from  day-break  to  curfew,"  and 
strict  provision  made  against  competition  in  labor.  At 
each  meeting  of  these  gilds  their  members  gathered  round 
the  Craft-box  which  contained  the  rules  of  their  Society, 
and  stood  with  bared  heads  as  it  was  opened.  The 
warden  and  a  quorum  of  gild-brothers  formed  a  court 
which  enforced  the  ordinances  of  the  gild,  inspected  all 
works  done  by  its  members,  confiscated  unlawful  tools 
or  unworthy  goods ;  and  disobedience  to  their  orders 
was  punished  by  fines  or  in  the  last  resort  by  expulsion, 
which  involved  the  loss  of  a  right  to  trade.  A  common 
fund  was  raised  by  contributions  among  the  members, 
which  not  only  provided  for  the  trade  objects  of  the  gild 
but  sufficed  to  found  chantries  and  masses,  and  set  up 
painted  windows  in  the  church  of  their  patron  saint. 
Even  at  the  present  day  the  arms  of  a  craft-gild  may 
often  be  seen  blazoned  in  cathedrals  side  by  side  with 
those  of  prelates  and  of  kings.  But  it  was  only  by  slow 
degrees  that  they  rose  to  such  a  height  as  this.  The  first 
steps  in  their  existence  were  the  most  difficult,  for  to 
enable  a  trade-gild  to  carry  out  its  objects  with  any 
success  it  was  first  necessary  that  the  whole  body  of 
craftsmen  belonging  to  the  trade  should  be  compelled  to 
join  the  gild,  and  secondly  that  a  legal  control  over  the 
trade  itself  should  be  secured  to  it.  A  royal  charter  was 
indispensable  for  these  purposes,  and  over  the  grant  of 
these  charters  took  place  the  first  strugglevwithtthe  mer- 
chant-gilds which  had  till  then  solely  exercised  jurisdic- 
tion over  trade  within  the  boroughs.  The  weavers,  who 
were  the  first  trade-gild  to  secure  royal  sanction  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  the  First,  were  still  engaged  in  a  contest 
for  existence  as  late  as  the  reign  of  John  when  the 


212  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

citizens  of  London  bought  for  a  time  the  suppression  of 
their  gild.  Even  under  the  House  of  Lancaster  Exeter 
was  engaged  in  resisting  the  establishment  of  a  tailor's 
gild.  From  the  eleventh  century  however  the  spread  of 
these  societies  went  steadily  on,  and  the  control  of  trade 
passed  more  and  more  from  the  merchant-gilds  to  the 
craft-gilds. 

It  is  this  struggle,  to  use  the  technical  terms  of  the 
time,  of  the  "  greater  folk  "  against  the  "lesser  folk,"  or 
of  the  "  commune,"  the  general  mass  of  the  inhabitants, 
against  the  "  prudhommes,"  or  ''  wiser "  few,  which 
brought  about,  as  it  passed  from  the  regulation  of  trade 
to  the  general  government  to  the  town,  the  great  civic 
revolution  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries. 
On  the  Continent,  and  especially  along  the  Rhine,  the 
struggle  was  as  fierce  as  the  supremacy  of  the  older 
burghers  had  been  complete.  In  Koln  the  craftsmen 
had  been  reduced  to  all  but  serfage,  and  the  merchant  of 
Brussels  might  box  at  his  will  the  ears  of  "the  man 
without  heart  or  honor,  who  lives  by  his  toil."  Such 
social  tyranny  of  class  over  class  brought  a  century  of 
bloodshed  to  the  cities  of  Germany  ;  but  in  England  the 
tyranny  of  class  over  class  was  restrained  by  the  general 
tenor  of  the  law,  and  the  re  volution  took  for  the  most  part 
a  milder  form.  The  longest  and  bitterest  strife  of  all  was 
naturally  at  London.  Nowhere  had  the  territorial  con- 
stitution struck  root  sodeeply,  and  no  where  had  the 
landed  oligarchy  risen  to  such  a  height  of  wealth  and  in- 
fluence. The  city  was  divided  into  wards,  each  of  which 
was  governed  by  analderman  drawn  from  the  ruling  class. 
In  some  indeedthe  office  seems  to  have  become  hereditary. 
The  "  magnates,"  or  "  barons,"  of  the  merchant-gild  ad- 
vised alone  on  all  matters  of  civic  government  or  trade 
regulation,  and  distributed  or  assessed  at  their  will  the 
revenues  or  burdens  of  the  town.  Such  a  position  afforded 
;iu  opening  for  corruption  and  oppression  of  the  most  gall- 
ing kind;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  a  general  impression 
of  the  unfair  assessment  of  the  dues  levied  on  the  poor 
and  the  undue  burdens  which  were  thrown  on  the  unen- 
franchised classes  which  provoked  the  first  serious  dis- 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  218 

content.  In  the  reign  of  Richard  the  First  William  of 
the  Long  Beard,  though  one  of  the  governing  body, 
placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  conspiracy  which  in  the 
panic-stricken  fancy  of  the  burghers  numbered  fifty 
thousand  of  the  craftsmen.  His  eloquence,  his  bold  de- 
fiance of  the  alderman  in  the  town-mote,  gained  him  at 
any  rate  a  wide  popularity,  and  the  crowds  who  sur- 
rounded him  hailed  him  as  "  the  saviour  of  the  poor." 
One  of  his  addresses  is  luckily  preserved  to  us  by  a  hearer 
of  the  time.  In  mediaeval  fashion  he  began  with  a  text 
from  the  Vnlgate,  "  Ye  shall  draw  water  with  joy  from 
the  fountain  of  the  Saviour."  "  I,"  he  began,  "  am  the 
saviour  of  the  poor.  Ye  poor  men  who  haVe  felt  the 
weight  of  rich  men's  hands,  draw  from  my  fountain 
waters  of  wholesome  instruction  and  that  with  joy,  for 
the  time  of  your  visitation  is  at  hand.  For  I  will  divide 
the  waters  from  the  waters.  It  is  the  people  who  are  the 
waters,  and  I  will  divide  the  lowly  and  faithful  folk  from 
the  proud  and  faithless  folk  ;  I  will  part  the  chosen  from 
the  reprobate  as  light  from  darkness."  But  it  was  in 
vain  that  he  strove  to  win  royal  favor  for  the  popular 
cause.  The  support  of  the  moneyed  classes  was  essential 
to  Richard  in  the  costly  wars  with  Philip  of  France  ;  and 
the  Justiciar,  Archbishop  Hubert,  after  a  moment  of 
hesitation  issued  orders  for  William  Longbeard's  arrest. 
William  felled  with  an  axe  the  first  soldier  who  advanced 
to  seize  him,  and  taking  refuge  with  a  few  adherents  in 
the  tower  of  St.  Mary-le-Bow  summoned  his  adherents 
to  rise.  Hubert  however,  who  had  already  flooded  the 
city  with  troops,  with  bold  contempt  of  the  right  of  sanc- 
tuary set  fire  to  the  tower.  William  was  forced  to  sur- 
render, and  a  burgher's  son,  whose  father  he  had  slain, 
stabbed  him  as  he  came  forth.  With  his  death  the  quar- 
rel slumbered  for  more  than  fifty  years.  But  the  move- 
ment towards  equality  went  steadily  on.  Under  pretext 
of  preserving  the  peace  the  unenfranchised  townsmen 
united  in  secret  frith-gilds  of  their  own,  and  mobs  rose 
from  time  to  time  to  sack  the  houses  of  foreigners  and  the 
wealthier  burgesses.  Nor  did  London  stand  alone  in 
this  movement.  In  all  the  larger  towns  the  same  discon- 


214  HISTOBY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tent  prevailed,  the  same  social  growth  called  for  new  in- 
stitutions, and  in  their  silent  revolt  against  the  oppres- 
sion of  the  Merchant-gild  the  Craft-gilds  were  training 
themselves  to  stand  forward  as  champions  of  a  wider 
liberty  in  the  Barons'  War. 

Without  the  towns  progress  was  far  slower  and  more 
fitful.     It  would  seem  indeed  that  the   conquest  of  the 
Norman  bore  harder  on  the  rural  population  than  on  any 
other  class  of  Englishmen.      Under  the  later  kings  of  the 
house  of  ^Elfred  the  number   of  absolute  slaves,  and  the 
number  of  freemen  had  alike  diminished.  The  pure  slave 
class  had  never  been  numerous,  and  it  had  been  reduced 
by  the  efforts  of  the  Church,  perhaps  by  the  general  con- 
vulsion of  the  Danish  wars.     But  these  wars  had  often 
driven  the  ceorl  or  freeman    of  the  township  to  "  com- 
mend "  himself  to  a  thegn  who  pledged  him  his  protection 
in    consideration  of  payment    in  a   rendering  of  labor. 
It  is  probable  that  these  dependent  ceorls  are  the  'villeins' 
of  the  Norrnan   epoch,  the  most  numerous  class  of  the 
Domesday  Survey,  men  sunk  indeed  from  pure  freedom 
and  bound  both  to  soil  and  lord,  but  as  yet  preserving 
much  of  their  older  rights,  retaining  their  land,  free  as 
against  all  men  but  their  lord,  and  still  sending  repre- 
sentatives to  hundred-moot  and  shire-moot.     They  stood 
therefore  far  above  the  "  landless  man,"  the  man  who 
had  never  possessed  even  under  the  old  constitution  po- 
litical rights,  whom  the  legislation  of  the  English  Kings 
had  forced  to  attach  himself  to  a  lord  on  pain  of  outlawry, 
and  who  served  as  household  servant  or  as  hired  laborer 
or  at  the  best  as  rent-paying  tenant  of  land  which  was 
not  his  own.     The  Norman  knight  or  lawyer  however 
saw  little  distinction  between  these  classes  ;  and  the  ten- 
dency of  legislation  under  the  Angevins  was  to  blend  all 
i/i  a  single  class  of  serfs.     While  the  pure  '  theow '  or 
absolute  slave  disappeared  therefore  the  ceorl  or  villein 
sunk  lower  in  the  social  scale.     But  though    the  rural 
population  was   undoubtedly  thrown  more  together  and 
fised  into  a  more  homogeneous  class,  ite  actual  position 
corresponded  very  imperfectly  with  the  view  of  the  law- 
yers. All  indeed  were  dependents  on  a  lord.  The  manor- 


THE   CHARTER.      1201—1291.  215 

house  became  the  centre  of  every  English  village.  The 
manor-court  was  held  in  its  hall ;  it  was  here  that  the  lord 
or  his  steward  received  homage,  recovered  fines,  held  the 
view  of  frank-pledge,  or  enrolled  the  villagers  in  their 
tithing.  Here  too,  if  the  lord  possessed  criminal  juris- 
diction, was  held  his  justice  court,  and  without  its  doors 
stood  his  gallows.  Around  it  lay  the  lord's  demesne  or 
home-farm,  and  the  cultivation  of  this  rested  wholly  with 
the  "  villeins  "  of  the  manor.  It  was  by  them  that  the 
great  barn  was  filled  with  sheaves,  the  sheep  shorn,  the 
grain  malted,  the  wood  hewn  for  the  manor-hall  fire. 
These  services  were  the  labor-rent  by  which  they  held 
their  lands,  and  it  was  the  nature  and  extent  of  this 
labor-rent  which  parted  one  class  of  the  population  from 
another.  The  '  villein,'  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
was  bound  only  to  gather  in  his  lord's  harvest  and  to  aid 
in  the  ploughing  and  sowing  of  autumn  and  Lent.  The 
cottar,  the  bordar,  and  the  laborer  were  bound  to  help  in 
the  work  of  the  home-farm  throughout  the  year. 

But  these  services  and  the  time  of  rendering  them  were 
strictly  limited  by  custom,  not  only  in  the  case  of  the 
ceorl  or  villein  but  in  that  of  the  originally  meaner  "  land- 
less man."  The  possession  of  his  little  homestead  with  the 
ground  around  it,  the  privilege  of  turning  out  his  cattle 
on  the  waste  of  the  manor,  passed  quietly  and  insensibly 
from  mere  indulgences  that  could  be  granted  or  with- 
drawn at  a  lord's  caprice  into  rights  that  could  be  pleaded 
at  law.  The  number  of  teams,  the  fines,  the  reliefs,  the 
services  that  a  lord  could  claim,  at  first  mere  matter  of 
oral  tradition,  came  to  be  entered  on  the  court-roll  of  the 
manor,  a  copy  of  which  became  the  title-deed  of  the 
villein.  It  was  to  this  that  he  owed  the  name  of  "  copy- 
holder "  which  at  a  later  time  superseded  his  older  title. 
Disputes  were  settled  by  a  reference  to  this  roll  or  on 
oral  evidence  of  the  custom  at  issue,  but  a  social  arrange- 
ment which  was  eminently  characteristic  of  the  English 
spirit  of  compromise  generally  secured  a  fair  adjustment 
of  the  claims  of  villein  and  lord.  It  was  the  duty  of  the 
lord's  bailiff  to  exact  their  due  services  from  the  villeins, 
but  his  coadjutor  in  this  office,  the  reeve  or  foreman  of 


216  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  manor,  was  chosen  by  the  tenants  themselves  and 
acted  as  representative  of  their  interests  and  rights.  A 
fresh  step  towards  freedom  was  made  by  the  growing 
tendency  to  commute  labor-services  for  money-payments. 
The  population  was  slowly  increasing,  and  as  the  law  of 
gavel-kind  which  was  applicable  to  all  landed  estates  not 
held  by  military  tenure  divided  the  inheritance  of  the 
tenantry  equally  among  their  sons  the  holding  of  each 
tenant  and  the  services  due  from  it  became  divided  in  a 
corresponding  degree.  A  labor-rent  thus  became  more 
difficult  to  enforce,  while  the  increase  of  wealth  among 
the  tenantry  and  the  rise  of  a  new  spirit  of  independence 
made  it  more  burdensome  to  those  who  rendered  it.  It 
was  probably  from  this  cause  that  the  commutation  of 
the  arrears  of  labor  for  a  money  payment,  which  had 
long  prevailed  on  every  estate,  gradually  developed  into 
a  general  commutation  of  services.  We  have  already 
witnessed  the  silent  progress  of  this  remarkable  change 
in  the  case  of  St.  Edmundsbury,  but  the  practice  soon 
became  universal,  and  "  malt-silver,"  "  wood-silver,"  and 
"larder-silver"  gradually  took  the  place  of  the  older 
personal  services  on  the  court-rolls.  The  process  of  com- 
mutation was  hastened  by  the  necessities  of  the  lords 
themselves.  The  luxury  of  the  castle-hall,  the  splendor 
and  pomp  of  chivalry,  the  cost  of  campaigne  drained  the 
purses  of  knight  and  baron,  and  the  sale  of  freedom  to  a 
serf  or  exemption  from  services  to  a  villein  afforded  an 
easy  and  tempting  mode  of  refilling  them.  In  this  pro- 
cess even  Kings  took  part.  At  a  later  time,  under  Ed- 
ward the  Third,  commissioners  were  sent  to  royal  estates 
for  the  especial  purpose  of  selling  manumissions  to  the 
King's  serfs ;  and  we  still  possess  the  names  of  those  who 
were  enfranchised  with  their  families  by  a  payment  of 
hard  cash  in  aid  of  the  exhausted  exchequer. 

Such  was  the  people  which  had  been  growing  into  a 
national  unity  and  a  national  vigor  while  English  king 
and  English  baronage  battled  for  rule.  But  king  and 
baronage  themselves  had  changed  like  townsman  and 
ceorl.  The  loss  of  Normandy,  entailing  as  it  did  the  loss 
of  their  Norman  lands,  was  the  last  of  many  influences 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  217 

nich  had  been  given  through,  a  century  and  a  half  a 
national  temper  to  the  baronage.  Not  only  the  "  new 
men,'' the  ministers  out  of  whom  the  two  Henrys  had 
raised  a  nobility,  were  bound  to  the  Crown,  but  the  older 
feudal  houses  no\v  owned  themselves  as  Englishmen  and 
set  aside  their  aims  after  personal  independence  for  a  love 
of  the  general  freedom  of  the  land.  They  stood  out  as 
the  natural  leaders  of  a  people  bound  together  by  the 
stern  government  which  had  crushed  all  local  division, 
which  had  accustomed  men  to  the  enjoyment  of  a  peace 
and  justice  that  imperfect  as  it  seems  to  modern  eyes  was 
almost  unexampled  elsewhere  in  Europe,  and  which  had 
trained  them  to  something  of  their  old  free  government 
again  by  the  very  machinery  of  election  it  used  to  facili- 
tate its  heavy  taxation.  On  the  other  hand  the  loss  of 
Normandy  brought  home  the  King.  The  growth  which 
had  been  going  on  had  easily  escaped  the  eyes  of  rulers 
who  were  commonly  absent  from  the  realm  and  busy 
with  the  affairs  of  countries  bej-ond  the  sea.  Henry  the 
Second  had  been  absent  for  years  from  England;  Rich- 
ard had  only  visited  it  twice  for  a  few  months :  John 
had  as  yet  been  almost  wholly  occupied  with  his  foreign 
dominions.  To  him  as  to  his  brother  England  had  as 
yet  been  nothing  but  a  land  whose  gold  paid  the  merce- 
naries that  followed  him,  and  whose  people  bowed  obedi- 
ently to  his  will.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  between  such 
a  ruler  and  such  a  nation  once  brought  together  strife 
must  come:  but  that  the  strife  came  as  it  did  and  ended 
as  it  did  was  due  above  all  to  the  character  of  the  King. 

"  Foul  as  it  is,  hell  itself  is  defiled  by  the  fouler  pres- 
ence of  John."  The  terrible  verdict  of  his  contem- 
poraries has  passed  into  the  sober  judgment  of  history. 
Externally  John  possessed  all  the  quickness,  the  vivacity, 
the  cleverness,  the  good-humor,  the  social  charm  which 
distinguished  his  house.  His  worst  enemies  owned  that 
he  toiled  steadily  and  closely  at  the  work  of  administra- 
tion. He  was  fond  of  learned  men  like  Gerald  of  Wales. 
He  had  a  strange  gift  of  attracting  friends  and  of  win- 
ning the  love  of  women.  But  in  his  inner  soul  John  was 
the  worst  outcome  of  the  Angevins.  He  united  into  one 


218  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

mass  of  wickedness  their  insolence,  their  selfishness, 
their  unbridled  lust,  their  cruelty  and  tyranny,  their 
shamelessness,  their  superstition,  their  cynical  indiffer- 
ence to  honor  or  truth.  In  mere  boyhood  he  tore  with 
brutal  levity  the  beards  of  the  Irish  chieftains  who  came 
to  own  him  as  their  lord.  His  ingratitude  and  perfidy 
brought  his  father  with  sorrow  to  the  grave.  To  his 
brother  he  was  the  worst  of  traitors.  All  Christendom 
believed  him  to  be  the  murderer  of  his  nephew,  Arthur 
of  Britanny.  He  abandoned  one  wife  and  was  faith- 
less to  another.  His  punishments  were  refinements  of 
cruelty,  the  starvation  of  children,  the  crushing  old  men 
under  copes  of  lead.  His  court  was  a  brothel  where  no 
woman  was  safe  from  the  royal  lust,  and  where  his 
cynicism  loved  to  publish  the  news  of  his  victims'  shame. 
He  was  as  craven  in  his  superstition  as  he  was  daring  in 
his  impiety.  Though  he  scoffed  at  priests  and  turned 
his  back  on  the  mass  even  amidst  the  solemnities  of  his 
coronation  he  never  stirred  on  a  journey  without  hang- 
ing relics  round  his  neck.  But  with  the  wickedness  of 
his  race  he  inherited  its  profound  ability.  His  plan  for 
the  relief  of  Chateau  Gaillard,  the  rapid  march  by  which 
he  shattered  Arthur's  hopes  at  Mirabel,  showed  an  in- 
born genius  for  war.  In  the  rapidity  and  breadth  of  his 
political  combinations  he  far  surpassed  the  statesmen  of 
his  time.  Throughout  his  reign  we  see  him  quick  to 
discern  the  difficulties  of  his  position,  and  inexhaustible 
in  the  resources  with  which  he  met  them.  The  over- 
throw of  his  continental  power  only  spurred  him  to  the 
formation  of  a  league  which  all  but  brought  Philip  to 
the  ground  ;  and  the  sudden  revolt  of  England  was  par- 
ried by  a  shameless  alliance  with  the  Papacy.  The 
closer  study  of  John's  history  clears  away  the  charges  of 
sloth  and  incapacity  with  which  men  tried  to  explain 
the  greatness  of  his  fall.  The  awful  lesson  of  his  life 
rests  on  the  fact  that  the  king  who  lost  Normandy,  be- 
came the  vassal  of  the  Pope,  and  perished  in  a  struggle 
of  despair  against  English  freedom  was  no  weak  and 
indolent  voluptuary  but  the  ablest  and  most  ruthless  of 
the  Angevins. 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 1291.  219 

From  the  moment  of  his  return  to  England  in  1204 
John's  whole  energies  were  bent  to  the  recovery  of  his 
dominions  on  the  Continent.  He  impatiently  collected 
money  and  men  for  the  support  of  those  adherents  of  the 
House  of  Anjou  who  were  still  struggling  against  the 
arms  of  France  in  Poitou  and  Guienne,  and  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1205  he  gathered  an  army  at  Portsmouth  and 
prepared  to  cross  the  Channel.  But  his  project  was  sud- 
denly thwarted  by -the  resolute  opposition  of  the  Primate, 
Hubert  Walter,  and  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  William 
Marshal.  So  completely  had  both  the  baronage  and 
the  Church  been  humbled  by  his  father  that  the  attitude 
of  their  representatives  revealed  to  the  King  a  new  spirit 
of  national  freedom  which  was  rising  around  him,  and 
John  at  once  braced  himself  to  a  struggle  with  it.  The 
death  of  Hubert  Walter  in  July,  only  a  few  days  after 
his  protest,  removed  his  most  formidable  opponent,  and 
the  King  resolved  to  neutralize  the  opposition  of  the 
Church  by  placing  a  creature  of  his  own  at  its  head. 
John  de  Grey,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  was  elected  by  the 
monks  of  Canterbury  at  his  bidding,  and  enthroned  as 
Primate.  But  in  a  previous  though  informal  gathering 
the  convent  had  already  chosen  its  sub-prior,  Reginald, 
as  Archbishop.  The  rival  claimants  hastened  to  appeal 
to  Rome,  and  their  appeal  reached  the  Papal  Court  be- 
fore Christmas.  The  result  of  the  contest  was  a  start- 
ling one  both  for  themselves  and  for  the  King.  After  a 
year's  careful  examination  Innocent  the  Third,  who  now 
occupied  the  Papal  throne,  quashed  at  the  close  of  1206 
both  the  contested  elections.  The  decision  was  probably 
a  just  one,  but  Innocent  was  far  from  stopping  there. 
The  monks  who  appeared  before  him  brought  powers 
from  the  convent  to  choose  a  new  Primate  should  their 
earlier  nomination  be  set  aside ;  and  John,  secretly 
assured  of  their  choice  of  Grey,  had  promised  to  confirm 
their  election.  But  the  bribes  which  the  King  lavished 
at  Rome  failed  to  win  the  Pope  over  to  this  plan  ;  and 
whether  from  mere  love  of  power,  for  he  was  pushing 
the  Papal  claims  of  supremacy  over  Christendom  further 
than  any  of  his  predecessors,  or  as  may  fairly  be  sup- 


220  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

posed  in  despair  of  a  free  election  within  English 
bounds,  Innocent  commanded  the  monks  to  elect  in  his 
presence  Stephen  Langton  to  the  archiepiscopal  see. 

Personally  a  better  choice  could  not  have  been  made, 
for  Stephen  was  a  man  who  by  sheer  weight  of  learning 
and  holiness  of  life  had  risen  to  the  dignity  of  Cardinal 
and  whose  after  career  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of 
English  patriots.  But  in  itself  the  step  was  an  usurpa- 
tion of  the  rights  both  of  the  Church  and  of  the  Crown. 
The  King  at  once  met  it  with  resistance.  When  Innocent 
consecrated  the  new  Primate  in  June,  1207,  and  threat- 
ened the  realm  with  interdict  if  Langton  were  any  longer 
excluded  from  his  see,  John  replied  by  a  counter  threat 
that  the  interdict  should  be  followed  by  the  banishment 
of  the  clergy  and  the  mutilation  of  every  Italian  he  could 
seize  in  the  realm.  How  little  he  feared  the  priesthood 
he  showed  when  the  clergy  refused  his  demand  of  a 
thirteenth  of  movables  for  the  whole  country  and  Arch- 
bishop Geoffry  of  York  resisted  the  tax  before  the  Coun- 
cil. John  banished  the  Archbishop  and  extorted  the 
money.  Innocent  however  was  not  a  man  to  draw  back 
from  his  purpose,  and  in  March  1208  the  interdict  he  had 
threatened  fell  upon  the  land.  All  worship  save  that  of 
a  few  privileged  orders,  all  administration  of  Sacraments 
save  that  of  private  baptism,  ceased  over  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  country  :  the  church-bells  were  silent,  the 
dead  lay  unburied  on  the  ground.  Many  of  the  bishops 
fled  from  the  country.  The  Church  in  fact,  so  long  the 
main  support  of  the  royal  power  against  the  baronage, 
was  now  driven  into  opposition.  Its  change  of  attitude 
was  to  be  of  vast  moment  in  the  struggle  which  was  im- 
pending :  but  John  recked  little  of  the  future  ;  he  replied 
to  the  interdict  by  confiscating  the  lands  of  the  clergy 
who  observed  it,  by  subjecting  them  in  spite  of  their  priv- 
ileges to  the  royal  courts,  and  by  leaving  outrages  on 
them  unpunished.  "  Let  him  go,"  said  John,  when  a 
Welshman  was  brought  before  him  for  the  murder  of  a 
priest,  "  he  has  killed  my  enemy."  In  1209  the  Pope 
proceeded  to  the  further  sentence  of  excommunication, 
and  the  King  was  formally  cut  off  from  the  pale  of  the 


THE   CHAETEE.      1204 — 1291. 

Church.  But  the  new  sentence  was  met  with  the  same 
defiance  as  the  old.  Five  of  the  bishops  fled  over  sea, 
and  secret  disaffection  was  spreading  widely,  but  there 
was  no  public  avoidance  of  the  excommunicated  King. 
An  Archdeacon  of  Norwich  who  withdrew  from  his 
service  was  crushed  to  death  under  a  cope  of  lead,  and 
the  hint  was  sufficient  to  prevent  either  prelate  or  noble 
from  following  his  example. 

The  attitude  of  John  showed  the  power  which  the  ad- 
ministrative reforms  of  his  father  had  given  to  the  Crown. 
He  stood  alone,  with  nobles  estranged  from  him  and  the 
Church  against  him,  but  his  strength  seemed  utterly  un- 
broken. From  the  first  moment  of  his  rule  John  had 
defied  the  baronage.  The  promise  to  satisfy  their  demand 
for  redress  of  wrongs  in  the  past  reign,  a  promise  made 
at  his  election,  remained  unfulfilled  ;  when  the  demand 
was  repeated  he  answered  it  by  seizing  their  castles  and 
taking  their  children  as  hostages  for  their  loyalty.  The 
cost  of  his  fruitless  threats  of  war  had  been  met  by  heavy 
and  repeated  taxation,  by  increased  land  tax  and  in- 
creased scutage.  The  quarrel  with  the  Church  and  fear 
of  their  revolt  only  deepened  his  oppression  of  the  nobles. 
He  drove  De  Braose,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  the 
Lords  Marchers,  to  die  in  exile,  while  his  wife  and  grand- 
children were  believed  to  have  been  starved  to  death  in 
the  royal  prisons.  On  the  nobles  who  still  clung  panic- 
stricken  to  the  court  of  the  excommunicate  king  John 
heaped  outrages  worse  than  death.  Illegal  exactions, 
the  seizure  of  their  castles,  the  preference  shown  to  for- 
eigners, were  small  provocations  compared  with  his 
attacks  on  the  honor  of  their  wives  and  daughters.  But 
the  baronage  still  submitted.  The  financial  exactions 
indeed  became  light  as  John  filled  his  treasury  with  the 
goods  of  the  Church  ;  the  King's  vigor  was  seen  in  the 
rapidity  with  which  he  crushed  a  rising  of  the  nobles  in 
Ireland  and  foiled  an  outbreak  of  the  Welsh;  while  the 
triumphs  of  his  father  had  taught  the  baronage  its  weak- 
ness in  any  single-handed  struggle  against  the  Crown. 
Hated  therefore  as  he  was  the  land  remained  still.  Only 
one  weapon  was  now  left  in  Innocent's  hands.  Men 


HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

held  then  that  a  King,  once  excommunicate,  ceased  to 
be  a  Christian  or  to  have  claims  on  the  obedience  of 
Christian  subjects.  As  spiritual  heads  of  Christendom, 
the  Popes  had  ere  now  asserted  their  right  to  remove 
such  a  ruler  from  his  throne  and  to  give  it  to  a  worthier 
than  he;  and  it  was  this  right  which  Innocent  at  last 
felt  himself  driven  to  exercise.  After  useless  threats  he 
issued  in  1212  a  bull  of  deposition  against  John,  absolved 
his  subjects  from  their  allegiance,  proclaimed  a  crusade 
against  him  as  an  enemy  to  Christianity  and  the  Church, 
and  committed  the  execution  of  the  sentence  to  the  King 
of  the  French.  John  met  the  announcement  of  this  step 
with  the  same  scorn  as  before.  His  insolent  disdain  suf- 
fered the  Roman  legate,  Cardinal  Paudulf,  to  proclaim 
his  deposition  to  his  face  at  Northampton.  When  Philip 
collected  an  army  for  an  attack  on  England  an  enormous 
host  gathered  at  the  King's  call  on  Barham  Down ;  and 
the  English  fleet  dispelled  all  danger  of  invasion  by 
crossing  the  Channel,  by  capturing  a  number  of  French 
ships,  and  by  burning  Dieppe. 

But  it  was  not  in  England  only  that  the  King  showed 
his  strength  and  activity.  Vile  as  he  was,  John  possessed 
in  a  high  degree  the  political  ability  of  his  race,  and  in 
the  diplomatic  efforts  with  which  he  met  the  danger  from 
France  he  showed  himself  his  father's  equal.  The  barons 
of  Poitou  were  roused  to  attack  Philip  from  the  south. 
John  bought  the  aid  of  the  Count  of  Flanders  on  his 
northern  border.  The  German  King,  Otto,  pledged  him- 
self to  bring  the  knighthood  of  Germany  to  support  an 
invasion  of  France.  But  at  the  moment  of  his  success  in 
diplomacy  John  suddenly  gave  way.  It  was  in  fact  the- 
revelation  of  a  danger  at  home  which  shook  him  from  his 
attitude  of  contemptuous  defiance.  The  bull  of  deposi- 
tion gave  fresh  energy  to  every  enemy.  The  Scotch 
King  was  in  correspondence  with  Innocent.  The  Welsh 
princes  who  had  just  been  forced  to  submission  broke  out 
again  in  war.  John  hanged  their  hostages,  and  called 
his  host  to  muster  for  a  fresh  inroad  into  Wales,  but  the 
army  met  only  to  become  a  fresh  source  of  danger. 
Powerless  to  oppose  the  King  openly,  the  baronage  had 


THE   CHARTER.       1204 — 1291.  228 

plunged  almost  to  a  man  into  secret  conspiracies.  The 
hostility  of  Philip  had  dispelled  their  dread  of  isolated 
action  ;  many  indeed  had  even  promised  aid  to  the  French 
King  on  his  landing.  John  found  himself  in  the  midst 
of  hidden  enemies ;  and  nothing  could  have  saved  him 
but  the  haste — whether  of  panic  or  quick  decision — 
with  which  he  disbanded  his  army  and  took  refuge  in 
Nottingham  Castle.  The  arrest  of  some  of  the  barons 
showed  how  true  were  his  fears,  for  the  heads  of  the 
French  conspiracy,  Robert  Fitzwalter  and  Eustace  de 
Vesci,  at  once  fled  over  sea  to  Philip.  His  daring  self- 
confidence,  the  skill  of  his  diplomacy,  could  no  longer 
hide  from  John  the  utter  loneliness  of  his  position.  At 
war  with  Rome,  with  France,  with  Scotland,  Ireland 
and  Wales,  at  war  with  the  Church,  he  saw  himself  dis- 
armed by  this  sudden  revelation  of  treason  in  the  one 
force  left  at  his  disposal.  With  characteristic  sudden- 
ness he  gave  way.  He  endeavored  by  remission  of  fines 
to  win  back  his  people.  He  negotiated  eagerly  with  the 
Pope,  consented  to  receive  the  Archbishop,  arid  promised ' 
to  repay  the  money  he  had  extorted  from  the  Church. 

But  the  shameless  ingenuity  of  the  King's  temper  was 
seen  in  his  resolve  to  find  in  his  very  humiliation  a  new 
source  of  strength.  If  he  yielded  to  the  Church  he  had 
no  mind  to  yield  to  the  rest  of  his  foes ;  it  was  indeed  in 
the  Pope  who  had  defeated  him  that  he  saw  the  means 
of  baffling  their  efforts.  It  was  Rome  that  formed  the 
link  between  the  varied  elements  of  hostility  which  com- 
bined against  him.  It  was  Rome  that  gave  its  sanction 
to  Philip's  ambition  and  roused  the  hopes  of  Scotch  and 
Welsh,  Rome  that  called  the  clergy  to  independence  and 
nerved  the  barons  to  resistance.  To  detach  Innocent  by 
submission  from  the  league  which  hemmed  him  in  on 
every  side  was  the  least  part  of  John's  purpose.  He  re- 
solved to  make  Rome  his  ally,  to  turn  its  spiritual  thun- 
ders on  his  foes,  to  use  it  in  breaking  up  the  confederacy 
it  had  formed,  in  crushing  the  baronage,  in  oppressing 
the  clergy,  in  paralyzing — as  Rome  only  could  paralyze 
— the  energy  of  the  Primate.  That  greater  issues  even 
than  these  were  involved  in  John's  rapid  change  of 


224  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

policy  time  was  to  show ;  but  there  is  no  need  to  credit 
the  King  with  the  foresight  that  would  have  discerned 
them.  His  quick  versatile  temper  saw  no  doubt  little 
save  the  momentary  gain.  But  that  gain  was  immense. 
Nor  was  the  price  as  hard  to  pay  as  it  seems  to  modern 
eyes.  The  Pope  stood  too  high  above  earthly  monarchs, 
his  claims,  at  least  as  Innocent  conceived  and  expressed 
them,  were  too  spiritual,  too  remote  from  the  immediate 
business  and  interests  of  .the  day,  to  make  the  owning  of 
his  suzerainty  any  very  practical  burden.  John  could 
recall  a  time  when  his  father  was  willing  to  own  the  same 
subjection  as  that  which  he  was  about  to  take  on  himself. 
He  could  recall  the  parallel  allegiance  which  his  brother 
had  pledged  to  the  Emperor.  Shame  indeed  there  must 
be  in  any  loss  of  independence,  but  in  this  less  than  any, 
and  with  Rome  the  shame  of  submission  had  already  been 
incurred.  But  whatever  were  the  King's  thoughts  his 
act  was  decisive.  On  the  15th  of  May  1213  he  knelt  be- 
fore the  legate  Pandulf,  surrendered  his  kingdom  to  the 
Roman  See,  took  it  back  again  as  a  tributary  vassal,  swore 
fealty  and  did  liege  homage  to  the  Pope. 

In  after  times  men  believed  that  England  thrilled  at 
the  news  with  a  sense  of  national  shame  such  as  she  had 
never  felt  before.  "  He  has  become  the  Pope's  man  "  the 
whole  country  was  said  to  have  murmured  ;  "he  has  for- 
feited the  very  name  of  King ;  from  a  free  man  he  has 
degraded  himself  into  a  serf."  But  this  was  the  belief  of 
a  time  still  to  come  when  the  rapid  growth  of  national 
feeling  which  this  step  and  its  issues  did  more  than  any- 
thing to  foster  made  men  look  back  on  the  scene  between 
John  and  Pandulf  as  a  national  dishonor.  We  see  little 
trace  of  such  a  feeling  in  the  contemporary  accounts  of 
the  time.  All  seem  rather  to  have  regarded  it  as  a  com- 
plete settlement  of  the  difficulties  in  which  king  and 
kingdom  were  involved.  As  a  political  measure  its  suc- 
cess was  immediate  and  complete.  The  French  army  at 
once  broke  up  in  impotent  rage,  and  when  Philip  turned 
on  the  enemy  John  had  raised  up  for  him  in  Flanders, 
five  hundred  English  ships  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
fell  upon  the  fleet  which  accompanied  the  French  army 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  225 

along  the  coast  and  utterly  destroyed  it.  The  league 
which  John  had  so  long  matured  at  once  disclosed  itself. 
Otto,  reinforcing  his  German  army  by  the  knighthood  of 
Flanders  and  Boulogne  as  well  as  by  a  body  of  mer- 
cenaries in  the  pay  of  the  English  King,  invaded  France 
from  the  north.  John  called  on  his  baronage  to  follow 
him  over  sea  for  an  attack  on  Philip  from  the  South. 

Their  plea  that  he  remained  excommunicate  was  set 
aside  by  the  arrival  of  Langton  and  his  formal  absolution 
of  the  King  on  a  renewal  of  his  coronation  oath  and  a 
pledge  to  put  away  all  evil  customs.  But  the  barons 
still  stood  aloof.  They  would  serve  at  home,  they  said, 
but  they  refused  to  cross  the  sea.  Those  of  the  north 
took  a  more  decided  attitude  of  opposition.  From  this 
point  indeed  the  northern  barons  begin  to  play  their  part 
in  our  constitutional  history.  Lacies,  Vescies,  Percies, 
Stutevilles,  Bruce?,  houses  such  as  those  of  de  Ros  or  de 
Vaux,  all  had  sprung  to  greatness  on  the  ruins  of  the 
Mowbrays  and  the  great  houses  of  the  Conquest  and  had 
done  service  to  the  Crown  in  its  strife  with  the  older 
feudatories.  But  loyal  as  was  their  tradition  they  were 
English  to  the  core  ;  they  had  neither  lands  nor  interest 
over  sea,  and  they  now  declared  themselves  bound  by  no 
tenure  to  follow  the  King  in  foreign  wars.  Furious  at  this 
check  to  his  plans  John  marched  in  arms  northwards  to 
bring  these  barons  to  submission.  But  he  had  now  to 
reckon  with  a  new  antagonist  in  the  Justiciar,  Geoffry 
Fitz-Peter.  Geoffry  had  hitherto  bent  to  the  King's  will ; 
but  the  political  sagacity  which  he  drew  from  the  school 
of  Henry  the  Second  in  which  he  had  been  trained 
showed  him  the  need  of  concession,  and  his  wealth,  his 
wide  kinship,  and  his  experience  of  affairs  gave  his  inter- 
position a  decisive  weight.  He  seized  on  the  political  op- 
portunity which  was  offered  by  the  gathering  of  a  Coun- 
cil at  St.  Albans  at  the  opening  of  August  with  the  pur- 
pose of  assessing  the  damages  done  to  the  Church.  Be- 
sides the  bishops  and  barons,  a  reeve  and  his  four  men 
were  summoned  to  this  Council  from  each  royal  demesne, 
no  doubt  simply  as  witnesses  of  the  sums  due  to  the 
plundered  clergy.  Their  presence  however  was  of  great 

15 


226  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

import.  It  is  the  first  instance  which  our  history  presents 
of  the  summons  of  such  representatives  to  a  national 
Council,  and  the  instance  took  fresh  weight  from  the 
great  matters  which  came  to  be  discussed.  In  the  King's 
name  the  Justiciar  promised  good  government  for  the 
time  to  come,  and  forbade  all  royal  officers  to  practise  ex- 
tortion as  they  prized  life  and  limb.  The  King's  peace 
was  pledged  to  those  who  had  opposed  him  in  the  past  : 
and  observance  of  the  laws  of  Henry  the  First  was  en- 
joined upon  all  within  the  realm. 

But  it  was  not  in  Geoffry  Fitz-Peter  that  English  free- 
dom was  to  find  its  champion  and  the  baronage  their 
leader.  From  the  moment  of  his  landing  in  England 
Stephen  Languon  had  taken  up  the  constitutional  position 
of  the  Primate  in  upholding  the  old  customs  and  rights 
of  the  realm  against  the  personal  despotism  of  the  kings. 
As  Anselm  had  withstood  William  the  Red,  as  Theobald 
had  withstood  Stephen,  so  Langton  prepared  to'  with- 
stand and  rescue  his  country  from  the  tyranny  of  John. 
He  had  already  forced  him  to  swear  to  observe  the  laws 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  in  other  words  the  traditional 
liberties  of  the  realm.  When  the  baronage  refused  to 
sail  for  Poitou  he  compelled  the  King  to  deal  with  them 
not  by  arms  but  by  process  of  law.  But  the  work  which 
he  now  undertook  was  far  greater  and  weightier  than 
this.  The  pledges  of  Henry  the  First  had  long  been  for- 
gotten when  the  Justiciar  brought  them  to  light,  but 
Langton  saw  the  vast  importance  of  such  a  precedent. 
At  the  close  of  the  month  he  produced  Henry's  charter  in 
a  fresh  gathering  of  barons  at  St.  Paul's,  and  it  was  at 
once  welcomed  as  a  base  for  the  needed  reforms.  From 
London  Langton  hastened  to  the  King,  whom  he  reached 
at  Northampton  on  his  way  to  attack  the  nobles  of  the 
north,  and  wrested  from  him  a  promise  to  bring  his  strife 
with  them  to  legal  judgment  before  assailing  them  in  arms. 
With  his  allies  gathering  abroad  John  had  doubtless  no 
wish  to  be  entangled  in  a  long  quarrel  at  home,  and  the 
Archbishop's  mediation  allowed  him  to  withdraw  with 
seeming  dignity.  After  a  demonstration  therefore  at 
Durham  John  marched  hastily  south  again,  and  reached 


THE  CHAETER.      1204 — 1291.  227 

Lonion  in  October.  His  Justiciar  at  once  laid  before  him 
the  claims  of  the  Councils  of  St.  Alban's  and  St.  Paul's; 
but  the  death  of  Geoffiy  at  this  juncture  freed  him  from 
the  pressure  which  his  minister  was  putting  upon  him. 
"  Now,  by  God's  feet,"  cried  John.  "  I  am  for  the  first 
time  King  and  Lord  of  England,"  and  he  entrusted  the 
vacant  justiciarship  to  a  Poitevin,  Peter  des  Roches,  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  whose  temper  was  in  harmony 
with  his  own.  But  the  death  of  Geoffry  only  called  the 
Archbishop  to  the  front,  and  Langton  at  once  demanded 
the  King's  assent  to  the  Charter  of  Henry  the  First.  In 
seizing  on  this  Charter  as  a  basis  for  national  action 
Langton  showed  a  political  ability  of  the  highest  order. 
The  enthusiasm  with  which  his  recital  was  welcomed 
showed  the  sagacity  with  which  the  Archbishop  had 
chosen  his  ground.  From  that  moment  the  baronage  was 
no  longer  drawn  together  in  secret  conspiracies  by  a 
sense  of  common  wrong  or  a  vague  longing  for  common 
deliverance :  they  were  openly  united  in  a  definite  claim 
of  national  freedom  and  national  law. 

John  could  as  j'et  only  meet  the  claim  by  delay.  His 
policy  had  still  to  wait  for  its  fruits  at  Rome,  his  di- 
plomacy to  reap  its  harvest  in  Flanders,  ere  he  could  deal 
with  England.  From  the  hour  of  his  submission  to  the 
Papacy  his  one  thought  had  been  that  of  vengeance  on 
the  barons  who,  as  he  held,  had  betrayed  him ;  but  ven- 
geance was  impossible  till  he  should  return  a  conqueror 
from  the  fields  of  France.  It  was  a  sense  of  this  danger 
which  nerved  the  baronage  to  their  obstinate  refusal  to 
follow  him  over  sea :  but  furious  as  he  was  at  their  re- 
sistance, the  Archbishop's  interposition  condemned  John 
still  to  wait  for  the  hour  of  his  revenge.  In  the  spring 
of  1214  he  crossed  with  what  forces  he  could  gather  to 
Poitou,  rallied  its  nobles  round  him,  passed  the  Loire  in 
triumph,  and  won  back  again  Angers,  the  home  of  his 
race.  At  the  same  time  Otto  and  the  Count  of  Flanders, 
their  German  and  Flemish  knighthood  strengthened  by 
reinforcements  from  Boulogne  as  well  as  by  a  body  of 
English  troops  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury,  threatened 
France  from  the  North.  For  the  moment  Philip  seemed 


228  HISTORY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

lost :  and  yet  on  the  fortunes  of  Philip  hung  the  fortunes 
of  English  freedom.  But  in  this  crisis  of  her  fate,  France 
was  true  to  herself  and  her  King.  From  every  borough 
of  Northern  France  the  townsmen  marched  to  his  rescue, 
and  the  village  priests  led  their  flocks  to  battle  with  the 
Church-banners  flying  at  their  head.  The  two  armies 
met  at  the  close  of  July  near  the  bridge  of  Bouvines,  be- 
tween Lille  and  Tournay,  and  from  the  first  the  day 
went  against  the  allies.  The  Flemish  knights  were  the 
first  to  fly  ;  then  the  Germans  in  the  centre  of  the  host 
were  crushed  by  the  overwhelming  numbers  of  the 
French ;  last  of  all  the  English  on  the  right  of  it  were 
broken  by  a  fierce  onset  of  the  Bishop  of  Beauvais  who 
charged  mace  in  hand  and  struck  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
to  the  ground.  The  news  of  this  complete  overthrow 
reached  John  in  the  midst  of  his  triumphs  in  the  South, 
and  scattered  his  hopes  to  the  winds.  He  was  at  once 
deserted  by  the  Poitevin  nobles;  and  a  hasty  retreat 
alone  enabled  him  to  return  in  October,  baffled  and  hu- 
miliated, to  his  island  kingdom. 

His  return  forced  on  the  crisis  to  which  events  had  so 
BO  long  been  drifting.  The  victory  at  Bouvines  gave 
strength  to  his  opponents.  The  open  resistance  of  the 
northern  Barons  nerved  the  rest  of  their  order  to  action. 
The  great  houses  who  had  cast  away  their  older  feudal 
traditions  for  a  more  national  policy  were  drawn  by  the 
crisis  into  close  union  with  the  families  which  had  sprung 
from  the  ministers  and  councillors  of  the  two  Henries. 
To  the  first  group  belonged  such  men  as  Saher  de  Quinci, 
the  Earl  of  Winchester,  Geoffrey  of  Mandeville,  Earl  of 
Essex,  the  Earl  of  Clare,  Fulk  Fitz-Warin,  William  Mal- 
let, the  houses  of  Fitz-Alan  and  Gant.  Among  the  second 
group  were  Henry  Bohun  and  Roger  Bigod,  the  Earls 
of  Hereford  and  Norfolk,  the  younger  William  Marshal, 
and  Robert  de  Vere.  Robert  Fitz-Walter,  who  took  the 
command  of  their  united  force,  represented  both  parties 
equally,  for  he  was  sprung  from  the  Norman  house  of 
Brionne,  while  the  Justiciar  of  Henry  the  Second, 
Richard  de  Lucy,  had  been  his  grandfather.  Secretly, 
and  on  the  pretext  of  pilgrimage,  these  nobles  met  at  St. 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  229 

Edmundsbury,  resolute  to  bear  no  longer  with  John's 
delays.  If  he  refused  to  restore  their  liberties  they  *wore 
to  make  war  on  him  till  he  confirmed  them  by  Charter 
under  the  King's  seal,  and  they  parted  to  raise  forces 
with  the  purpose  of  presenting  their  demands  at  Christ- 
mas. John,  knowing  nothing  of  the  coming  storm,  pur- 
sued his  policy  of  winning  over  the  Church  by  granting 
it  freedom  of  election,  while  he  embittered  still  more  the 
strife  with  his  nobles  by  demanding  scutage  from  the 
northern  nobles  who  had  refused  to  follow  him  to  Poitou. 
But  the  barons  were  now  ready  to  act,  and  early  in  Jan- 
uary in  the  memorable  year  1215  they  appeared  in  arms 
to  lay,  as  they  had  planned,  their  demands  before  the 
King. 

John  was  taken  by  surprise.  He  asked  for  a  truce  till 
Easter-tide,  and  spent  the  interval  in  fevered  efforts  to 
avoid  the  blow.  Again  he  offered  freedom  to  the  Church, 
and  took  vows  as  a  Crusader  against  whom  war  was  a 
sacrilege,  while  he  called  for  a  general  oath  of  allegiance 
and  fealty  from  the  whole  body  of  his  subjects.  But 
month  after  month  only  showed  the  King  the  useless- 
ness  of  further  resistance.  Though  Pandulf  was  with 
him,  his  vassalage  had  as  yet  brought  little  fruit  in  the 
way  of  aid  from  Rome  ;  the  commissioners  whom  he  sent 
to  plead  his  cause  at  the  shire-courts  brought  back  news 
that  no  man  would  help  him  against  the  charter  that  the 
barons  claimed :  and  his  efforts  to  detach  the  clergy 
from  the  Itague  of  his  opponents  utterly  failed.  The 
nation  was  against  the  King.  He  was  far  indeed  from 
being  utterly  deserted.  His  ministers  still  clung  to  him, 
men  such  as  Geoffrey  de  Lucy,  Geoffrey  de  Furnival, 
Thomas  Basset,  and  William  Briwere,  statesmen  trained 
in  the  administrative  school  of  his  father  and  who,  dissent 
as  they  might  from  John's  mere  oppression,  still  looked 
on  the  power  of  the  Crown  as  the  one  barrier  against 
feudal  anarchy  :  and  beside  them  stood  some  of  the  great 
nobles  of  royal  blood,  his  father's  bastard  Earl  William 
of  Salisbury,  his  cousin  Earl  William  of  Warenne,  and 
Henry  Earl  of  Cornwall,  a  grandson  of  Henry  the  First. 
With  him  too  remained  Ranulf,  Earl  of  Chester,  and  the 


230  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

wisest  and  noblest  of  the  barons,  William  Marshal  the 
elder,  Earl  of  Pembroke.  William  Marshal  had  shared  in 
the  rising  of  the  younger  Henry  against  Henry  the 
Second,  and  stood  by  him  as  he  died ;  he  had  shared  in 
the  overthrow  of  William  Lougchamp  and  in  the  out- 
lawry of  John.  He  was  now  an  old  man,  firm,  as  we 
shall  see  in  his  after  course,  to  recall  the  government  to 
the  path  of  freedom  and  law,  but  shrinking  from  a  strife 
which  might  bring  back  the  anarchy  of  Stephen's  day, 
and  looking  for  reforms  rather  in  the  bringing  constitu- 
tion?.! pressure  to  bear  upon  the  King  than  in  forcing 
them  from  him  by  arms. 

But  cling  as  such  men  might  to  John,  they  clung  to 
him  rather  as  mediators  than  adherents.  Their  sympa- 
thies went  with  the  demands  of  the  barons  when  the 
delay  which  had  been  granted  was  over  and  the  nobles 
again  gathered  in  arms  at  Brackley  in  Northamptonshire 
to  lay  their  claims  before  the  King.  Nothing  marks  more 
strongly  the  absolutely  despotic  idea  of  his  sovereignty 
which  John  had  formed  than  the  passionate  surprise 
which  breaks  out  in  his  reply.  "  Why  do  they  not  ask 
for  my  kingdom?"  he  cried.  "I  will  never  grant  such 
liberties  as  will  make  me  a  slave ! "  The  imperialist 
theories  of  the  lawyers  of  his  father's  court  had  done 
their  work.  Held  at  bay  by  the  practical  sense  of  Henry, 
the}r  had  told  on  the  more  headstrong  nature  of  his  sons. 
Richard  and  John  both  held  with  Glanvill  that  the  will 
of  the  prince  was  the  law  of  the  land  ;  and  to  fetter  that 
r/ill  by  the  customs  and  franchises  which  were  embodied 
in  the  barons'  claims  seemed  to  John  a  monstrous  usurpa- 
tion of  his  rights.  But  no  imperialist  theories  had 
touched  the  minds  of  his  people.  The  country  rose  as 
one  man  at  his  refusal.  At  the  close  of  May  London 
threw  open  her  gates  to  the  forces  of  the  barons,  now 
arrayed  under  Robert  Fitz- Walter  as  "  Marshal  of  the 
Army  of  God  and  Holy  Church."  Exeter  and  Lincoln 
followed  the  example  of  the  capital ;  promises  of  aid 
came  from  Scotland  and  Wales;  the  northern  barons 
marched  hastily  under  Eustace  de  Vesci  to  join  their 
comrades  in  London.  Even  the  nobles  who  had  as  yet 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  231 

clung  to  the  King,  but  whose  hopes  of  conciliation  were 
blasted  by  his  obstinacy,  yielded  at  last  to  the  summons 
of  the  "  Army  of  God."  Pandulf  indeed  and  Archbishop 
Langton  still  remained  with  John,  but  they  counselled 
as  Eaii  Ranulf  and  William  Marshal  counselled  his  ac- 
ceptance of  the  Charter.  None  in  fact  counselled  its 
rejection  save  his  new  Justiciar,  the  Poitevin  Peter  des 
Roches,  and  other  foreigners  who  knew  the  barons  pur- 
posed driving  them  from  the  land.  But  even  the  number 
of  these  was  small ;  there  was  a  moment  when  John 
found  himself  with  but  seven  knights  at  his  back  and 
before  him  a  nation  in  arms.  Quick  as  he  was,  he  had 
been  taken  utterly  by  surprise.  It  was  in  vain  that  in 
the  short  respite  he  had  gained  from  Christmas  to  Easter 
he  had  summoned  mercenaries  to  his  aid  and  appealed  to 
his  new  suzerain,  the  Pope.  Summons  and  appeal  were 
alike  too  late.  Nursing  wrath  in  his  heart,  John  bowed 
to  necessity  and  called  the  barons  to  a  conference  on  an 
island  in  the  Thames,  between  Windsor  and  Staines, 
near  a  marshy  meadow  by  the  river  side,  the  meadow  of 
Runnymede.  The  King  encamped  on  one  bank  of  the 
river,  the  barons  covered  the  flat  of  Runnymede  on  the 
other.  Their  delegates  met  on  the  15th  of  July  in  the 
island  between  them,  but  the  negotiations  were  a  mere 
cloak  to  cover  John's  purpose  of  unconditional  submis- 
sion. The  Great  Charter  was  discussed  and  agreed  to  in 
a  single  day. 

Copies  of  it  were  made  and  sent  for  preservation  to  the 
cathedrals  and  churches,  and  one  copy  may  still  be  seen 
in  the  British  Museum,  injured  by  age  and  fire,  but  with 
the  royal  seal  still  hanging  from  the  brown,  shrivelled 
parchment.  It  is  impossible  to  gaze  without  reverence 
on  the  earliest  monument  of  English  freedom  which  we 
can  see  with  our  own  eyes  and  touch  with  our  own 
hands,  the  great  Charter  to  which  from  age  to  age  men 
have  looked  back  as  the  groundwork  of  English  liberty. 
But  in  itself  the  Charter  was  no  novelty,  nor  did  it  claim 
to  establish  any  new  constitutional  principles.  The 
Charter  of  Henry  the  First  formed  the  basis  of  the  whole, 
and  the  additions  to  it  are  for  the  most  part  formal 


232  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

recognitions  of  the  judicial  and  administrative  changes 
introduced  by  Henry  the  Second.  What  was  new  in  ic 
was  its  origin.  In  form,  like  the  Charter  on  which  it 
was  based,  it  was  nothing  but  a  royal  grant.  In  actual 
fact  it  was  a  treaty  between  the  whole  English  people 
and  its  king.  In  it  England  found  itself  for  the  first 
time  since  the  Conquest  a  nation  bound  together  by 
common  national  interests,  by  a  common  national  sym- 
pathy. In  words  which  almost  close  the  Charter,  the 
"  community  of  the  old  land  "  is  recognized  as  the  great 
body  from  which  the  restraining  power  of  the  baronage 
takes  its  validity.  There  is  no  distinction  of  blood  or 
class,  of  Norman  or  not  Norman,  of  noble  or  not  noble. 
All  are  recognized  as  Englishmen,  the  rights  of  all  are 
owned  as  English  rights.  Bishops  and  nobles  claimed 
and  secured  at  Runnymede  the  rights  not  of  baron  and 
churchman  only  but  those  of  freeholder  and  merchant, 
of  townsman  and  villein.  The  provisions  against  wrong 
and  extortion  which  the  barons  drew  up  as  against  the 
King  for  themselves  they  drew  up  as  against  themselves 
for  their  tenants.  Based  too  as  it  professed  to  be  on 
Henry's  Charter  it  was  far  from  being  a  mere  copy  of 
what  had  gone  before.  The  vague  expressions  of  the  old 
Charter  were  now  exchanged  for  precise  and  elaborate 
provisions.  The  bonds  of  unwritten  custom  which  the 
older  grant  did  little  more  than  recognize  had  proved  too 
weak  to  hold  the  Angevins  ;  and  the  baronage  set  them 
aside  for  the  restraints  of  written  and  defined  law.  It  is 
in  this  way  that  the  Great  Charter  marks  the  transition 
from  the  age  of  traditional  rights,  preserved  in  the  na- 
tion's memory  and  officially  declared  by  the  Primate,  to 
the  age  of  written  legislation,  of  Parliaments  and  Stat- 
utes, which  was  to  come. 

Its  opening  indeed  is  in  general  terms.  The  Church 
had  shown  its  power  of  self-defence  in  the  struggle  over 
the  interdict,  and  the  clause  which  recognized  its  rights 
alone  retained  the  older  and  general  form.  But  all  vague- 
ness ceases  when  the  Charter  passes  on  to  deal  with  the 
rights  of  Englishmen  at  large,  their  right  to  justice,  to 
security  of  person  and  property,  to  good  government. 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  233 

"  No  freeman,"  ran  a  memorable  article  that  lies  at  the 
base  of  our  whole  judicial  system  "  shall  be  seized  or 
imprisoned,  or  dispossessed,  or  outlawed,  or  in  any  way 
brought  to  ruin :  we  will  not  go  against  any  man  nor 
send  against  him,  save  by  legal  judgment  of  his  peers  or 
by  the  law  of  the  land."  "  To  no  man  will  we  sell,"  runs 
another,  "  or  deny,  or  delay,  right  or  justice."  The  gre.it 
reforms  of  the  past  reigns  were  now  formally  recognized ; 
judges  of  assize  were  to  hold  their  circuits  four  times  in 
the  year,  and  the  King's  Court  was  no  longer  to  follow 
the  King  in  his  wanderings  over  the  iculm  but  to  sit  in 
a  fixed  place.  But  the  denial  of  justice  under  John  was 
a  small  danger  compared  with  the  lawless  exactions  both 
of  himself  and  his  predecessor.  Richard  had  increased 
the  amount  of  the  scutage  which  Henry  the  Second  had 
introduced,  and  applied  it  to  raise  funds  for  his  ransom. 
He  had  restored  the  Danegeld,  or  land-tax,  so  often 
abolished,  under  the  new  name  of  "  carucage,"  had  seized 
the  wool  of  the  Cistercians  and  the  plate  of  the  churches, 
and  rated  movables  as  well  as  land.  John  had  again 
raised  the  rate  of  scutage,  and  imposed  aids,  fines,  and 
ransoms  at  his  pleasure  without  counsel  of  the  baronage. 
The  Great  Charter  met  this  abuse  by  a  provision  on 
which  our  constitutional  system  rests.  "  No  scutage  or 
aid  [other  than  the  three  customary  feudal  aids]  shall 
be  imposed  in  our  realm  save  by  the  common  council  of 
the  realm  ;  "  and  to  this  Great  Council  it  was  provided 
that  prelates  and  the  greater  barons  should  be  summoned 
by  special  writ  and  all  tenants  in  chief  through  the 
sheriffs  and  bailiffs  at  least  forty  days  before.  The  pro* 
vision  defined  what  had  probably  been  the  common  usage 
of  the  realm  ;  but  the  definition  turned  it  into  a  national 
right,  a  right  so  momentous  that  on  its  rests  our  whole 
Parliamentary  life.  Even  the  baronage  seem  to  have 
been  startled  when  they  realized  the  extent  of  their 
claim ;  and  the  provision  was  dropped  from  the  later 
issue  of  the  Charter  at  the  outset  of  the  next  reign.  But 
the  clause  brought  home  to  the  nation  at  large  their 
possession  of  a  right  which  became  dearer  as  years  went 
by.  More  and  more  clearly  the  nation  discovered  that 


234  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

in  these  simple  words  lay  the  secret  of  political  power. 
It  was  the  right  of  self-taxation  that  England  fought  for 
under  Earl  Simon  as  she  fought  for  it  under  Hampden. 
It  was  the  establishment  of  this  right  which  established 
English  freedom. 

The  rights  which  the  barons  claimed  for  themselves 
they  claimed  for  the  nation  at  large.  The  boon  of  free 
and  unbought  justice  was  a  boon  for  all,  but  a  special 
provision  protected  the  poor.  The  forfeiture  of  the  free- 
man on  conviction  of  felony  was  never  to  include  his 
tenement,  or  that  of  the  merchant  his  wares,  or  that  of 
the  countryman,  as  Henry  the  Second  had  long  since 
ordered,  his  wain.  The  means  of  actual  livelihood  were 
to  be  left  even  to  the  worst.  The  seizure  of  provisions, 
the  exaction  of  forced  labor,  by  royal  officers  was  for- 
bidden ;  and  the  abuses  of  the  forest  system  were  checked 
by  &  clause  which  disafforested  all  forests  made  in  John's 
reign.  The  under-tenants  were  protected  against  all  law- 
less exactions  of  their  lords  in  precisely  the  same  terms 
as  these  were  protected  against  the  lawless  exactions  of 
the  Crown.  The  towns  were  secured  in  the  enjoyment 
of  their  municipal  privileges,  their  freedom  from  arbi- 
trary taxation,  their  rights  of  justice,  of  common  deliber- 
ation, of  regulation  of  trade.  "  Let  the  city  of  London 
have  all  its  old  liberties  and  its  free  customs,  as  well  by 
land  as  by  water.  Besides  this,  we  will  and  grant  that 
all  other  cities,  aud  boroughs,  and  towns,  and  ports,  have 
all  their  liberties  and  free  customs."  The  influence  of 
the  trading  class  is  seen  in  two  other  enactments  by 
which  freedom  of  journeying  and  trade  was  secured  to 
foreign  merchants  and  uniformity  of  weights  and  meas- 
ures was  ordered  to  be  enforced  throughout  the  realm. 

There  remained  only  one  question,  and  that  the  most 
difficult  of  all ;  the  question  how  to  secure  this  order 
which  the  Charter  established  in  the  actual  government 
of  the  realm.  It  was  easy  to  sweep  away  the  immediate 
abuses  ;  the  hostages  were  restored  to  their  homes,  the 
foreigners  banished  by  a  clause  in  the  Charter  from  the 
country.  But  it  was  less  easy  to  provide  means  for  the 
control  of  a  King  whom  no  man  could  trust.  By  the 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  235 

treaty  as  settled  at  Runnymede  a  council  of  twenty-four 
barons  were  to  be  chosen  from  the  general  body  of  their 
order  to  enforce  on  John  the  observance  of  the  Charter 
with  the  right  of  declaring  war  on  the  King  should  its 
provisions  be  infringed,  and  it  was  provided  that  the 
Charter  should  not  only  be  published  throughout  the 
whole  country  but  sworn  to  at  every  hundred-mote  and 
town-mote  by  order  from  the  King.  "  They  have  given 
me  four-and-twenty  over-kings,"  cried  John  in  a  burst  of 
fury,  flinging  himself  on  the  floor  and  gnawing  sticks  and 
straw  in  his  impotent  rage.  But  the  rage  soon  passed 
into  the  subtle  policy  of  which  he  was  a  master.  After 
a  few  days  he  left  Windsor ;  arid  lingered  for  months 
along  the  southern  shore,  waiting  for  news  of  the  aid  he 
had  solicited  from  Rome  and  from  the  Continent.  It 
was  not  without  definite  purpose  that  he  had  become  the 
vassal  of  the  Papacy.  While  Innocent  was  dreaming  of 
a  vast  Christian  Empire  with  the  Pope  at  its  head  to  en- 
force justice  and  religion  on  his  under-kings,  John  be- 
lieved that  the  Papal  protection  would  enable  him  to  rule 
as  tyrannically  as  he  would.  The  thunders  of  the  Papacy 
were  to  be  ever  at  hand  for  his  protection,  as  the  armies 
of  England  are  at  hand  to  protect  the  vileness  and  op- 
pression of  a  Turkish  Sultan  or  a  Nizam  of  Hyderabad. 
His  envoys  were  already  at  Rome,  pleading  for  a  con- 
demnation of  the  Charter.  The  after  action  of  the  Papacy 
shows  that  Innocent  was  moved  by  no  hostility  to  English 
freedom.  But  he  was  indignant  that  a  matter  which 
might  have  been  brought  before  his  court  of  appeal  as 
overlord  should  have  been  dealt  with  by  armed  revolt, 
and  in  this  crisis  both  his  imperious  pride  and  the  legal 
tendency  of  his  mind  swayed  him  to  the  side  of  the  King 
who  submitted  to  his  justice.  He  annulled  the  Great 
Charter  by  a  bull  in  August,  and  at  the  close  of  the  year 
excommunicated  the  barons. 

His  suspension  of  Stephen  Langton  from  the  exercise 
of  his  office  as  Primate  was  a  more  fatal  blow.  Langton 
hurried  to  Rome,  and  his  absence  left  the  barons  with- 
out a  head  at  a  moment  when  the  very  success  of  their 
efforts  was  dividing  them.  Their  forces  were  already 


236  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

disorganized  when  autumn  brought  a  host  of  foreign  sol- 
diers from  over  sea  to  the  King's  standard.  After  star- 
ving Rochester  into  submission  John  found  himself  strong 
enough  to  march  ravaging  through  the  Midland  and 
Northern  counties,  while  his  mercenaries  spread  like 
locusts  over  the  whole  face  of  the  land.  From  Berwick 
the  King  turned  back  triumphant  to  coop  up  his  enemies 
in  London  while  fresh  Papal  excommunications  fell  o'n 
the  barons  and  the  city.  But  the  burghers  set  Innocent 
at  defiance.  "  The  ordering  of  secular  matters  apper- 
taineth  not  to  the  Pope,"  they  said,  in  words  that  seem 
like  mutterings  of  the  coming  Lollardism ;  and  at  the 
advice  of  Simon  Langton,  the  Archbishop's  brother,  bells 
swung  out  and  mass  was  celebrated  as  before.  Success 
however  was  impossible  for  the  undisciplined  militia  of 
the  country  and  the  towns  against  the  trained  forces  of 
the  King,  and  despair  drove  the  barons  to  listen  to  Fitz- 
Walter  and  the  French  party  in  their  ranks,  and  to  seek 
aid  from  over  sea.  Philip  had  long  been  waiting  the  op- 
portunity for  his  revenge  upon  John.  In  the  April  of 
1216  his  son  Louis  accepted  the  crown  in  spite  of  In- 
nocent's excommunications,  and  landed  soon  after  in 
Kent  with  a  considerable  force.  As  the  barons  had  fore- 
seen, the  French  mercenaries  who  constituted  John's 
host  refused  to  fight  against  the  French  sovereign  and 
the  whole  aspect  of  affairs  was  suddenly  reversed.  De- 
serted by  the  bulk  of  his  troops,  the  King  was  forced  to 
fall  rapidly  back  on  the  Welsh  Marches,  while  his  rival 
entered  London  and  received'the  submission  of  the  larger 
part  of  England.  Only  Dover  held  out  obstinately 
against  Louis.  By  a  series  of  rapid  marches  John  suc- 
ceeded in  distracting  the  plans  of  the  barons  and  in  re- 
lieving Lincoln  ;  then  after  a  short  stay  at  Lynn  he 
crossed  the  Wash  in  a  fresh  movement  to  the  north.  In 
crossing  however  his  army  was  surprised  by  the  tide,  and 
his  baggage  with  the  royal  treasures  washed  away. 
Fever  seized  the  baffled  tyrant  as  he  reached  the  Abbey 
of  Swineshead,  his  sickness  was  inflamed  by  a  gluttonous 
debauch,  and  on  the  19th  of  October  John  breathed  his 
last  at  Newark. 


CHAPTER  II. 

HENET     THE     THIRD. 
1216—1232. 

THE  death  of  John  changed  the  whole  face  of  English 
affairs.  His  son,  Henry  of  Winchester,  was  but  nine 
years  old,  and  the  pity  which  was  stirred  by  the  child's 
helplessness  was  aided  by  a  sense  of  injustice  in  burden- 
ing him  with  the  iniquity  of  his  father.  At  his  death 
John  had  driven  from  his  side  even  the  most  loyal  of  his 
barons ;  but  William  Marshal  had  clung  to  him  to  the 
last,  and  with  him  was  Gualo,  the  Legate  of  Innocent's 
successor,  Honorius  the  Third.  The  position  of  Gualo 
as  representative  of  the  Papal  over-lord  of  the  realm  was 
of  the  highest  importance,  and  his  action  showed  the 
real  attitude  of  Rome  towards  English  freedom.  The 
boy-king  was  hardly  crowned  at  Gloucester  when  Legate 
and  Earl  issued  in  his  name  the  very  Charter  against 
which  his  father  had  died  fighting.  Only  the  clauses 
which  regulated  taxation  and  the  summoning  of  par- 
liament were  as  yet  declared  to  be  suspended.  The 
choice  of  William  Marshal  as  "  governor  of  King  and 
kingdom  "  gave  way  to  this  step  ;  and  its  effect  was  seen 
when  the  contest  was  renewed  in  1217.  Louis  was  at 
first  successful  in  the  eastern  counties,  but  the  political 
reaction  was  aided  by  jealousies  which  broke  out  between 
the  English  and  French  nobles  in  his  force,  and  the  first 
drew  gradually  away  from  him.  So  general  was  the 
defection  that  at  the  opening  of  summer  William  Marshal 
felt  himself  strong  enough  for  a  blow  at  his  foes.  Lofris 
himself  was  investing  Dover  and  a  joint  army  of  French 
and  English  barons  under  the  Count  of  Perche  and 
Robert  Fitz-Walter  was  besieging  Lincoln  when  gather- 

(237) 


238  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

ing  troops  rapidly  from  the  royal  castles  the  regent 
marched  to  the  relief  of  the  latter  town.  Cooped  up  in 
its  narrow  streets  and  attacked  at  once  by  the  Earl  and 
the  garrison,  the  barons  fled  in  utter  rout ;  the  Count  of 
Perche  fell  on  the  field,  Robert  Fitz-Walter  was  taken 
prisoner.  Louis  at  once  retreated  on  London  and  called 
for  aid  from  France.  But  a  more  terrible  defeat  crushed 
his  remaining  hopes.  A  small  English  fleet  which  set 
sail  from  Dover  under  Hubert  de  Burgh  fell  boldly  on 
the  reinforcements  which  were  crossing  under  escort  of 
Eustace  the  Monk,  a  well-known  freebooter  of  the  Chan- 
nel. Some  incidents  of  the  fight  light  up  for  us  the 
naval  warfare  of  the  time.  From  the  decks  of  the 
English  vessels  bowmen  poured  their  arrows  into  the 
crowded  transports,  others  hurled  quicklime  into  their 
enemies'  faces,  while  the  more  active  vessels  crashed 
with  their  armed  prows  into  the  sides  of  the  French 
ships.  The  skill  of  the  mariners  of  the  Cinque  Ports 
turned  the  day  against  the  larger  forces  of  their  op- 
ponents, and  the  fleet  of  Eustace  was  utterly  destroyed. 
The  royal  army  at  once  closed  upon  London,  but 
resistance  was  really  at  an  end.  By  a  treaty  concluded 
at  Lambeth  in  September  Louis  promised  to  withdraw 
from  England  on  payment  of  a  sum  which  he  claimed  as 
debt ;  his  adherents  were  restored  to  their  possessions, 
the  liberties  of  London  and  other  towns  confirmed,  and 
the  prisoners  on  either  side  set  at  liberty.  A  fresh  issue 
of  the  Charter,  though  in  its  modified  form,  proclaimed 
yet  more  clearly  the  temper  and  policy  of  the  Earl 
Marshal. 

His  death  at  the  opening  of  1219,  after  a  year  spent  in 
giving  order  to  the  realm,  brought  no  change  in  the 
system  he  had  adopted.  The  control  of  affairs  passed 
into  the  hands  of  a  new  legate,  Pandulf,  of  Stephen 
Langton  who  had  just  returned  forgiven  from  Rome,  ftncl 
of  the  Justiciar,  Hubert  de  Burgh.  It  was  a  time  of 
^transition,  and  the  temper  of  the  Justiciar  was  eminently 
transitional.  Bred  in  the  school  of  Henry  the  Second, 
Hubert  had  little  sympathy  with  national  freedom,  and 
though  resolute  to  maintain  the  Charter  he  can  have  had 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  239 

small  love  for  it ;  his  conception  of  good  government, 
like  that  of  his  master,  lay  in  a  wise  personal  adminis- 
tration, in  the  preservation  of  order  and  law.  But  he 
combined  with  this  a  thoroughly  English  desire  for 
national  independence,  a  hatred  of  foreigners,  and  a 
reluctance  to  waste  English  blood  and  treasure  in  Con- 
tinental struggles.  Able  as  he  proved  himself,  his  task 
was  one  of  no  common  difficulty.  He  was  hampered  by 
the  constant  interference  of  Rome.  A  Papal  legate 
resided  at  the  English  court,  and  claimed  a  share  in  the 
administration  of  the  realm  as  the  representative  of  its 
over-lord  and  as  guardian  of  the  young  sovereign.  A 
foreign  party  too  had  still  a  footing  in  the  kingdom,  for 
William  Marshal  had  been  unable  to  rid  himself  of  men 
like  Peter  des  Roches  or  Faukes  de  Breaute",  who  had 
fought  on  the  royal  side  in  the  struggle  against  Louis. 
Hubert  had  to  deal  too  with  the  anarchy  which  that 
struggle  left  behind  it.  From  the  time  of  the  Conquest 
the  centre  of  England  had  been  covered  with  the  domains 
of  great  houses,  whose  longings  were  for  feudal  in- 
dependence and  whose  spirit  of  revolt  had  been  held  in 
check  partly  by  the  stern  rule  of  the  Kings  and  partly 
by  the  rise  of  a  baronage  sprung  from  the  Court  and 
settled  for  the  most  part  in  the  North.  The  oppression 
of  John  united  both  the  earlier  and  these  newer  houses 
in  the  struggle  for  the  Charter.  But  the  character  of 
each  remained  unchanged,  and  the  close  of  the  struggle 
saw  the  feudal  party  break  out  in  their  old  lawlessness 
and  defiance  of  the  Crown. 

For  a  time  the  anarchy  of  Stephen's  days  seemed  to 
revive.  But  the  Jus^ciar  was  resolute  to  crush  it,  and 
he  was  backed  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  Stephen 
Langton.  A  new  and  solemn  coronation  of  the  young 
King  in  1220  was  followed  by  a  demand  for  the  res- 
toration of  the  royal  castles  which  had  been  seized  by 
the  barons  and  foreigners.  The  Earl  of  Chester,  the 
head  of  the  feudal  baronage,  though  he  rose  in  armed 
rebellion,  quailed  before  the  march  of  Hubert  and  the 
Primate's  threats  of  excommunication.  A  more  for- 
midable foe  remained  in  the  Frenchman,  Faukes  de 


240  HTSTOBT   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Breaute",  the  sheriff  of  six  counties,  with  six  royal  castles 
in  his  hands,  and  allied  both  with  the  rebel  barons  and 
Llewelyn  of  Wales.  But  in  1224  his  castle  of  Bedford 
was  besieged  for  two  months ;  and  on  its  surrender  the 
stern  justice  of  Hubert  hung  the  twenty-four  knights 
and  their  retainers  who  formed  the  garrison  before  its 
walls.  The  blow  was  effectual ;  the  royal  castles  were 
surrendered  by  the  barons  and  the  land  was  once  more 
at  peace.  Freed  from  foreign  soldiery,  the  country  was 
freed  also  from  the  presence  of  the  foreign  legate.  Lang- 
ton  wrested  a  promise  from  Rome  that  so  long  as  he 
lived  no  future  legate  should  be  sent  to  England,  and 
with  Pandulfs  resignation  in  1221  the  direct  interference 
of  the  Papacy  hi  the  government  of  the  realm  came  to 
an  end.  But  even  these  services  of  the  Primate  were 
small  compared  with  his  services  to  English  freedom. 
Throughout  his  life  the  Charter  was  the  first  object  of 
his  care.  The  omission  of  the  articles  which  restricted 
the  royal  power  over  taxation  in  the  Charter  which  was 
published  at  Henry's  accession  in  1216  was  doubtless 
due  to  the  Archbishop's  absence  and  disgrace  at  Rome. 
The  suppression  of  disorder  seems  to  have  revived  the 
older  spirit  of  resistance  among  the  royal  ministers  ;  for 
when  Langton  demanded  a  fresh  confirmation  of  the 
Charter  in  Parliament  at  London  William  Brewer,  one 
of  the  King's  councillors,  protested  that  it  had  been  ex- 
torted by  force  and  was  without  legal  validity.  "  If  you 
loved  the  King,  William,"  the  Primate  burst  out  in 
anger,  "  you  would  not  throw  a  stumbling-block  in  the 
way  of  the  peace  of  the  realm."  The  young  King  was 
cowed  by  the  Archbishop's  wra^h,  and  promised  observ- 
ance of  the  Charter.  But  it  may  have  been  their  con- 
sciousness of  such  a  temper  among  the  royal  councillors 
that  made  Langton  and  the  baronage  demand  two  years 
later  a  fresh  promulgation  of  the  Charter  as  the  price  of 
a  subsidy,  and  Henry's  assent  established  the  principle 
so  fruitful  of  constitutional  results,  that  redress  of  wrongs 
precedes  a  grant  to  the  Crown. 

These  repeated  sanctions  of  the  Charter  and  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  realm  year  after  year  in  accordance  with 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  241 

its  provisions  were  gradually  bringing  the  new  freedom 
home  to  the  mass  of  Englishmen.  But  the  sense  of 
liberty  was  at  this  time  quickened  and  intensified  by  a 
religious  movement  which  stirred  English  society  to  its 
depths.  Never  had  the  priesthood  wielded  such  bound- 
less power  over  Christendom  as  in  the  days  of  Innocent 
the  Third  and  his  immediate  successors.  But  its  religious 
hold  on  the  people  was  loosening  day  by  day.  The  old 
reverence  for  the  Papacy  was  fading  away  before  the  uni- 
versal resentment  at  its  political  ambition,  its  lavish  use 
of  interdict  and  excommunication  for  purely  secular  ends, 
its  degradation  of  the  most  sacred  sentences  into  means 
of  financial  extortion.  In  Italy  the  struggle  that  was 
opening  between  Rome  and  Frederick  the  Second  dis- 
closed a  spirit  of  skepticism  which  among  the  Epicurean 
poets  of  Florence  denied  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and 
attacked  the  very  foundations  of  the  faith  itself.  In 
Southern  Gaul,  Languedoc  and  Provence  had  embraced 
the  heresy  of  the  Albigenses  and  thrown  off  all  allegiance 
to  the  Papacy.  Even  in  England,  though  there  were  no 
signs  as  yet  of  religious  revolt,  and  though  the  political 
action  of  Rome  had  been  in  the  main  on  the  side  of  free- 
dom, there  was  a  spirit  of  resistance  to  its  interference 
with  national  concerns  which  broke  out  in  the  struggle 
against  John.  "  The  Pope  has  no  part  in  secular  matters," 
had  been  the  reply  of  London  to  the  interdict  of  Honorius. 
And  within  the  English  Church  itself  there  was  much 
to  call  for  reform.  Its  attitude  in  the  strife  for  the  Char- 
ter as  well  as  the  after  work  of  the  Primate  had  made  it 
more  popular  than  ever  ;  but  its  spiritual  energy  was  less 
than  its  political.  The  disuse  of  preaching,  the  decline 
of  the  monastic  orders  into  rich  landowners,  the  non- 
residence  and  ignorance  of  the  parish-priests,  lowered 
the  religious  influence  of  the  clergy.  The  abuses  of  the 
time  foiled  even  the  energy  of  such  men  as  Bishop  Gros- 
seteste  of  Lincoln.  His  constitutions  forbid  the  clergy 
to  haunt  taverns,  to  gamble,  to  share  in  drinking  bouts, 
to  mix  in  the  riot  and  debauchery  of  the  life  of  the  baron- 
age. But  such  prohibitions  witness  to  the  prevalence 
of  the  evils  they  denounce.  Bishops  and  deans  were 

16 


242  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

still  withdrawn  from  their  ecclesiastical  duties  to  act  as 
ministers,  judges,  or  ambassadors.  Benefices  were  heaped 
in  hundreds  at  a  time  on  royal  favorites  like  John  Man- 
sel.  Abbeys  absorbed  the  tithes  of  parishes  and  then 
served  them  by  half-starved  vicars,  while  exemptions  pur- 
chased from  Rome  shielded  the  scandalous  lives  of  canons 
and  monks  from  all  episcopal  discipline.  And  behind  all 
this  was  a  group  of  secular  statesmen  and  scholars,  the 
successors  of  such  critics  as  Walter  Map,  waging  indeed 
no  open  warfare  with  the  Church,  but  noting  with  bitter 
sarcasm  its  abuses  and  its  faults. 

To  bring  the  world  back  again  within  the  pale  of  the 
Church  was  the  aim  of  two  religious  orders  which  sprang 
suddenly  to  life  at  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
The  zeal  of  the  Spaniard  Dominic  was  roused  at  the  sight 
of  the  lordty  prelates  who  sought  by  fire  and  sword  to 
win  the  Albigensian  heretics  to  the  faith.  "  Zeal,"  he 
cried,  "must  be  met  by  zeal,  lowliness  by  lowliness,  false 
sanctity  by  real  sanctity,  preaching  lies  by  preaching 
truth."  His  fiery  ardor  and  rigid  orthodoxy  were  sec- 
onded by  the  mystical  piety,  the  imaginative  enthusiasm 
of  Francis  of  Assisi.  The  life  of  Francis  falls  like  a 
stream  of  tender  light  across  the  darkness  of  the  time. 
In  the  frescoes  of  Giotto  or  the  verse  of  Dante  we  see 
him  take  Poverty  for  his  bride.  He  strips  himself  of  all, 
he  flings  his  very  clothes  at  his  father's  feet,  that  he  may 
be  one  with  Nature  and  God.  His  passionate  verse 
claims  the  moon  for  his  sister  and  the  sun  for  his  brother. 
He  calls  on  his  brother  the  Wind,  and  his  sister  the  Water. 
His  last  faint  cry  was  a  "  Welcome,  Sister  Death  ! '' 
Strangely  as  the  two  men  differed  from  each  other,  their 
aim  was  the  same — to  convert  the  heathen,  to  extirpate 
heresy,  to  reconcile  knowledge  with  orthodoxy,  above 
all  to  carry  the  gospel  to  the  poor.  The  work  was  to  be 
done  by  an  utter  reversal  of  the  older  monasticism,  by 
seeking  personal  salvation  in  effort  for  the  salvation  of 
their  fellow-men,  by  exchanging  the  solitary  of  the 
cloister  for  the  preacher,  the  monk  for  the  "brother  "  or 
friar.  To  force  the  new  "  brethren  "  into  entire  depen- 
dence on  those  among  whom  they  labored  their  vow  of 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  248 

Poverty  was  turned  into  a  stern  reality ;  the  "  Begging 
Friars  "  were  to  subsist  solely  on  alms,  they  might  pos- 
sess neither  money  nor  lands,  the  very  houses  in  which 
they  lived  were  to  be  held  in  trust  for  them  by  others. 
The  tide  of  popular  enthusiasm  which  welcomed  their 
appearance  swept  before  it  the  reluctance  of  Rome,  the 
jealousy  of  the  older  orders,  the  opposition  of  the  paro- 
chial priesthood.  Thousands  of  brethren  gathered  in  a 
few  years  round  Francis  and  Dominic  ;  and  the  begging 
preachers,  clad  in  coarse  frock  of  serge  with  a  girdle  of 
rope  round  their  waist,  wandered  barefooted  as  mission- 
aries over  Asia,  battled  with  heresy  in  Italy  and  Gaul,  lec- 
tured in  the  Universities,  and  preached  and  toiled  among 
the  poor. 

To  the  towns  especially  the  coming  of  the  Friars  was 
a  religious  revolution.  They  had  been  left  for  the  most 
part  to  the  worst  and  most  ignorant  of  the  clergy,  the  mass- 
priest,  whose  sole  subsistence  lay  in  his  fees.  Burgher 
and  artisan  were  left  to  spell  out  Avhat  religious  instruc- 
tion they  might  from  the  gorgeous  ceremonies  of  the 
Church's  ritual  or  the  scriptural  pictures  and  sculptures 
which  were  graven  on  the  walls  of  its  minsters.  We  can 
hardly  wonder  at  the  burst  of  enthusiasm  which  wel- 
comed the  itinerant  preacher  whose  fervid  appeal,  coarse 
wit,  and  familiar  story  brought  religion  into  the  fair  and 
the  market  place.  In  England,  where  the  Black  Friars 
of  Dominic  arrived  in  1221,  the  Grey  Friars  of  Francis 
in  1224,  both  were  received  with  the  same  delight.  As 
the  older  orders  had  chosen  the  country,  the  Friars  chose 
the  town.  They  had  hardly  landed  at  Dover  before  they 
made  straight  for  London  and.  Oxford.  In  their  igno- 
rance of  the  road  the  first  two  Grey  Brothers  lost  their 
way  in  the  woods  between  Oxford  and  Baldon,  and  fear- 
ful of  night  and  of  the  floods  turned  aside  to  a  grange  of 
the  monks  of  Abingdon.  Their  ragged  clothes  and 
foreign  gestures,  as  they  prayed  for  hospitality,  led  the 
porter  to  take  them  for  jongleurs,  the  jesters  and  jugglers 
of  the  day,  and  the  news  of  this  break  in  the  monotony  of 
their  lives  brought  prior,  sacrist,  and  cellarer  to  the  door 
to  welcome  them  and  witness  their  tricks.  The  disap- 


244  HISTORY   OF   THE    ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

point  ent  was  too  much  for  the  temper  of  the  monks,  and 
the  brothers  were  kicked  roughly  from  the  gate  to  find 
their  night's  lodging  under  a  tree.  But  the  welcome  of 
the  townsmen  made  up  everywhere  for  the  ill-will  and 
opposition  of  both  clergy  and  monks.  The  work  of  the 
Friars  was  physical  as  well  as  moral.  The  rapid  progress 
of  population  within  the  boroughs  had  outstripped  the 
sanitary  regulations  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  fever  or 
plague  or  the  more  terrible  scourge  of  leprosy  festered  in 
the  wretched  hovels  of  the  suburbs.  It  was  to  haunts 
such  as  these  that  Francis  had  pointed  his  disciples,  and 
the  Grey  Brethren  at  once  fixed  themselves  in  the 
meanest  and  poorest  quarters  of  each  town.  Their  first 
work  lay  in  the  noisome  lazar-houses ;  it  was  amongst 
the  lepers  that  they  commonly  chose  the  site  of  their 
homes.  At  London  they  settled  in  the  shambles  of  New- 
gate; at  Oxford  they  made  their  way  to  the  swampy 
ground  between  its  walls  and  the  streams  of  Thames. 
Huts  of  mud  and  timber,  as  mean  as  the  huts  around 
them,  rose  within  the  rough  fence  and  ditch  that  bounded 
the  Friary.  The  order  of  Francis  made  a  hard  fight  against 
the  taste  for  sumptuous  buildings  and  for  greater 
personal  comfort  which  characterized  the  time.  "  I  did 
not  enter  into  religion  to  build  walls,"  protested  an  Eng- 
lish provincial  when  the  brethren  pressed  for  a  larger 
house  ;  and  Albert  of  Pisa  ordered  a  stone  cloister  which 
the  burgesses  of  Southampton  had  built  for  them  to  be 
razed  to  the  ground.  "  You  need  no  little  mountains 
to  lift  your  heads  to  heaven,"  was  his  scornful  reply  to  a 
claim  for  pillows.  None  but  the  sick  went  shod.  An 
Oxford  Friar  found  a  pair  of  shoes  one  morning,  and  wore 
them  at  matins.  At  night  he  dreamed  that  robbers  leapt 
on  him  in  a  dangerous  pass  between  Gloucester  and  Ox- 
ford with  shouts  of  "  Kill,  kill !  "  "I  am  a  friar," shrieked 
the  terror-stricken  brother.  "  You  lie,"  was  the  instant 
answer,  "  for  you  go  shod."  The  Friar  lifted  up  his  foot 
in  disproof,  but  the  shoe  was  there.  In  an  agony  of  re- 
pentance he  woke  and  flung  the  pair  out  of  window. 

It  was  with  less  success  that  the  order  struggled  against 
the  passion  of  the  time  for  knowledge.     Their  vow  of 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  245 

poverty,  rigidly  interpreted  as  it  was  by  their  founders, 
would  have  denied  them  the  possession  of  books  or  ma- 
terials for  study.  "  I  am  your  breviary,  I  am  your  bre- 
viary," Francis  cried  passionately  to  a  novice  who  asked 
for  a  psalter.  When  the  news  of  a  great  doctor's  recep- 
tion was  brought  to  him  at  Paris,  his  countenance  fell. 
"  I  am  afraid,  my  son,"  he  replied,  "  that  such  doctors 
will  be  the  destruction  of  my  vineyard.  They  are  the 
true  doctors  who  with  the  meekness  of  wisdom  show 
forth  good  works  for  the  edification  of  their  neighbors." 
One  kind  of  knowledge  indeed  their  work  almost  forced 
on  them.  The  popularity  of  their  preaching  soon  led 
them  to  the  deeper  study  of  theology ;  within  a  short 
time  after  their  establishment  in  England  we  find  as  many 
as  thirty  readers  or  lecturers  appointed  at  Hereford,  Lei- 
cester, Bristol,  and  other  places,  and  a  regular  succession 
of  teachers  provided  at  each  University.  The  Oxford 
Dominicans  lectured  on  theology  in  the  nave  of  their 
new  church  while  philosophy  was  taught  in  the  cloister. 
The  first  provincial  of  the  Grey  Friars  built  a  school  in 
their  Oxford  house  and  persuaded  Grosseteste  to  lecture 
there.  His  influence  after  his  promotion  to  the  see  of 
Lincoln  was  steadily  exerted  to  secure  theological  study 
among  the  Friars,  as  well  as  their  establishment  in  the 
University ;  and  in  this  work  he  was  ably  seconded  by 
his  scholar,  Adam  Marsh,  or  de  Marisco,  under  whom 
the  Franciscan  school  at  Oxford  attained  a  reputation 
throughout  Christendom.  Lyons,  Paris,  and  Koln  bor- 
rowed from  it  their  professors  :  it  was  through  its  influ- 
ence indeed  that  Oxford  rose  to  a  position  hardly  inferior 
to  that  of  Paris  itself  as  a  centre  of  scholasticism.  But 
the  result  of  this  powerful  impulse  was  soon  seen  to  be 
fatal  to  the  wider  intellectual  activity  which  had  till  now 
characterized  the  Universities.  Theology  in  its  scholas- 
tic form  resumed  its  supremacy  in  the  schools.  Its  only 
efficient  rivals  were  practical  studies  such  as  medicine 
and  law.  The  last,  as  he  was  by  far  the  greatest,  in- 
stance of  the  freer  and  wider  culture  which  had  been  the 
glory  of  the  last  century,  was  Roger  Bacon,  and  no  name 
better  illustrates  the  rapidity  and  completeness  with 
wliich  it  passed  away. 


246  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Roger  Bacon  was  the  child  of  royalist  parents  who 
were  driven  into  exile  and  reduced  to  poverty  by  the 
civil  wars.  From  Oxford,  where  he  studied  under  Ed- 
mund of  Abingdon  to  whom  he  owed  his  introduction  to 
the  works  of  Aristotle,  he  passed  to  the  University  of 
Paris,  and  spent  his  whole  heritage  there  in  costly  stud- 
ies and  experiments.  "  From  my  youth  up,"  he  writes, 
u  I  have  labored  at  the  sciences  and  tongues.  I  have 
sought  the  friendship  of  all  men  among  the  Latins  who 
had  any  reputation  for  knowledge.  I  have  caused  youths 
to  be  instructed  in  languages,  geometry,  arithmetic,  the 
construction  of  tables  and  instruments,  and  many  need- 
ful things  besides."  The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  such 
studies  as  he  had  resolved  to  pursue  were  immense.  He 
was  without  instruments  or  means  of  experiment. 
"  Without  mathematical  instruments  no  science  can  be 
mastered,"  he  complains  afterwards,  "  and  these  instru- 
ments are  not  to  be  found  among  the  Latins,  nor  could 
they  be  made  for  two  or  three  hundred  pounds.  Besides, 
better  tables  are  indispensably  necessary,  tables  on  which 
the  motions  of  the  heavens  are  certified  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  the  world  without  daily  labor,  but 
these  tables  are  worth  a  king's  ransom  and  could  not  be 
made  without  a  vast  expense.  I  have  often  attempted 
the  composition  of  such  tables,  but  could  not  finish  them 
through  failure  of  means  and  the  folly  of  those  whom  I 
had  to  employ."  Books  were  difficult  and  sometimes 
even  impossible  to  procure.  "  The  scientific  works  of 
Aristotle,  of  Avicenna,  of  Seneca,  of  Cicero,  and  other 
ancients  cannot  be  had  without  great  cost ;  their  princi- 
pal works  have  not  been  translated  into  Latin,  and  copies 
of  others  are  not  to  be  found  in  ordinary  libraries  or  else- 
where. The  admirable  books  of  Cicero  deRepublica  are 
not  to  be  found  anywhere,  so  far  as  I  can  hear,  though  I 
have  made  anxious  inquiry  for  them  in  different  parts  of 
the  world,  and  by  various  messengers.  I  could  never 
find  the  works  of  Seneca,  though  I  made  diligent  search 
for  them  during  twenty  years  and  more.  And  so  it  is 
with  many  more  most  useful  books  connected  with  the 
science  of  morals."  It  is  only  words  like  these  of  his 


THE    CHARTER.       1204—1291.  247 

own  that  bring  home  to  us  the  keen  thirst  for  knowl- 
edge, the  patience,  the  energy  of  Roger  Bacon.  He  re- 
turned as  a  teacher  to  Oxford,  and  a  touching  record  of 
his  devotion  to  those  whom  he  taught  remains  in  the 
story  of  John  of  London,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  whose  ability 
raised  him  above  the  general  level  of  his  pupils.  "  When 
he  came  to  me  as  a  poor  boy,"  says  Bacon  in  recommend- 
ing him  to  the  Pope,  "  I  caused  him  to  be  nurtured  and 
instructed  for  the  love  of  God,  especially  since  for  apti- 
tude and  innocence  I  have  never  found  so  towardly  a 
youth.  Five  or  six  years  ago  I  caused  him  to  be  taught 
in  languages,  mathematics,  and  optics,  and  I  have  gratu- 
itously instructed  him  with  my  own  lips  since  the  time 
that  I  received  your  mandate.  There  is  no  one  at  Paris 
who  knows  so  much  of  the  root  of  philosoplry,  though  he 
has  not  produced  the  branches,  flowers, 'and  fruit  because 
of  his  youth,  and  because  he  has  had  no  experience  in 
teaching.  But  he  has  the  means  of  surpassing  all  the 
Latins  if  he  live  to  grow  old  and  goes  on  as  he  has 
begun." 

The  pride  with  which  he  refers  to  his  system  of  in- 
struction was  justified  by  the  wide  extension  which  he 
have  to  scientific  teaching  in  Oxford.  It  is  probably  of 
himself  that  he  speaks  when  he  tells  us  that "  the  science 
of  optics  has  not  hitherto  been  lectured  on  at  Paris  or 
elsewhere  among  the  Latins,  save  twice  at  Oxford."  It 
was  a  science  on  which  he  had  labored  for  ten  years. 
But  his  teaching  seems  to  have  fallen  on  a  barren  soil. 
From  the  moment  when  the  Friars  settled  in  the  Univer- 
sities scholasticism  absorbed  the  whole  mental  energy 
of  the  student  world.  The  temper  of  the  age  was 
against  scientific  or  philosophical  studies.  The  older 
enthusiasm  for  knowledge  was  dying  down  ;  the  study 
of  law  was  the  one  source  of  promotion,  whether  in 
Church  or  state ;  philosophy  was  discredited,  literature 
in  its  purer  forms  became  almost  extinct.  After  forty 
years  of  incessant  study,  Bacon  found  himself  in  his  own 
words  "  unheard,  forgotten,  buried."  He  seems  at  one 
time  to  have  been  wealthy,  but  his  wealth  was  gone. 
"  During  the  twenty  years  that  I  have  specially  labored 


248  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

in  the  attainment  of  wisdom,  abandoning  the  path  of 
common  men,  I  have  spent  on  these  pursuits  more  than 
two  thousand  pounds,  not  to  mention  the  cost  of  books, 
experiments,  instruments,  tables,  the  acquisition  of  lan- 
guages, and  the  like.  Add  to  all  this  the  sacrifices  I 
have  made  to  procure  the  friendship  of  the  wise  and  to 
obtain  well-instructed  assistants."  Ruined  and  baffled 
in  his  hopes,  Bacon  listened  to  the  counsels  of  his  friend 
Grosseteste  and  renounced  the  world.  He  became  a  friar 
of  the  order  of  St.  Francis,  an  order  where  books  and 
study  were  looked  upon  as  hindrances  to  the  work 
which  it  had  specially  undertaken,  that  of  preaching 
among  the  masses  of  the  poor.  He  had  written  little. 
So  far  was  he  from  attempting  to  write  that  his  new  su- 
periors prohibited  him  from  publishing  anything  under 
pain  of  forfeiture  of  the  book  and  penance  of  bread  and 
water.  But  we  can  see  the  craving  of  his  mind,  the 
passionate  instinct  of  creation  which  marks  the  man  of 
genius,  in  the  joy  with  which  he  seized  a  strange  oppor- 
tunity that  suddenly  opened  before  him.  "•  Some  few 
chapters  on  different  subjects,  written  at  the  entreaty  of 
friends,"  seem  to  have  got  abroad,  and  were  brought  by 
one  of  the  Pope's  chaplains  under  the  notice  of  Clement 
the  Fourth.  The  Pope  at  once  invited  Bacon  to  write. 
But  difficulties  stood  in  his  way.  Materials,  transcrip- 
tion, and  other  expenses  for  such  a  work  as  he  projected 
would  cost  at  least  .£60,  and  the  Pope  sent  not  a  penny. 
Bacon  begged  help  from  his  family,  but  they  were  ruined 
like  himself.  No  one  would  lend  to  a  mendicant  friar, 
and  when  his  friends  raised  the  money  he  needed  it  was 
by  pawning  their  goods  in  the  hope  of  repayment  from 
Clement.  Nor  was  this  all ;  the  work  itself,  abstruse 
and  scientific  as  was  its  subject,  had  to  be  treated  in  a 
clear  and  popular  form  to  gain  the  Papal  ear.  But  diffi- 
culties which  would  have  crushed  another  man  only  roused 
Roger  Bacon  to  an  almost  superhuman  energy.  By  the 
close  of  1267  the  work  was  done.  The  "  greater  work," 
itself  in  modern  form  a  closely  printed  folio,  with  its 
successive  summaries  and  appendices  in  the  "  lesser " 
and  the  "  third  "  works  (which  make  a  good  octavo  more) 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  249 

were  produced  and  forwarded  to  the  Pope  within  fifteen 
months. 

Xo  trace  of  this  fiery  haste  remains  in  the  book  itself. 
The  "  Opus  Majus  "  is  alike  wonderful  in  plan  and  detail. 
Bacon's  main  purpose,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Whewell,  is 
"  to  urge  the  necessity  of  a  reform  in  the  mode  of  philoso- 
phizing, to  set  forth  the  reasons  why  knowledge  had  not 
made  a  greater  progress,  to  draw  back  attention  to  sources 
of  knowledge  which  had  been  unwisely  neglected,  to  dis- 
cover other  sources  which  were  yet  wholly  unknown, 
and  to  animate  men  to  the  undertaking  by  a  prospect  of 
the  vast  advantages  which  it  offered."  The  development 
of  his  scheme  is  on  the  largest  scale ;  he  gathers  to- 
gether the  whole  knowledge  of  his  time  on  every  branch 
of  science  which  it  possessed,  and  as  he  passes  them  in 
review  he  suggests  improvements  in  nearly  all.  His 
labors,  both  here  and  in  his  after  works,  in  the  field  of 
grammar  and  philology,  his  perseverance  in  insisting  on 
the  necessity  of  correct  texts,  of  an  accurate  knowledge  of 
languages,  of  an  exact  interpretation,  are  hardly  less  re- 
markable than  his  scientific  investigations.  From  gram- 
mar he  passes  to  mathematics,  from  mathematics  to  experi- 
mental philosophy.  Under  the  name  of  mathematics  in- 
deed was  included  all  the  physical  science  of  the  time. 
"  The  neglect  of  it  for  nearly  thirty  or  forty  years," 
pleads  Bacon  passionately,  "'hath  nearly  destroyed 
the  entire  studies  of  Latin  Christendom.  For  he 
who  knows  not  mathematics  cannot  know  any  other 
sciences ;  and  what  is  more,  he  cannot  discover  his 
own  ignorance  or  find  its  proper  remedies."  Geogra- 
phy, chronology,  arithmetic,  music,  are  brought  into 
something  of  scientific  form,  and  like  rapid  sketches 
are  given  of  the  question  of  climate,  hydrography, 
geography,  and  astrology.  The  subject  of  optics,  his 
own  especial  study,  is  treated  with  greater  fulness; 
he  enters  into  the  question  of  the  anatomy  of  the  eye 
besides  discussing  problems  which  lie  more  strictly 
within  the  province  of  optical  science.  In  a  word,  the 
"Greater  Work,"  to  borrow  the  phrase  of  Dr.  Whew  ell, 
is  "  at  once  the  Encyclopaedia  and  the  Novum  Organum 


250  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  the  thirteenth  century."  The  whole  of  the  afterworks 
of  Roger  Bacon — and  treatise  after  treatise  has  of  late 
been  disentombed  from  our  libraries — are  but  develop- 
ments in  detail  of  the  magnificent  conception  he  laid  be- 
fore Clement.  Such  a  work  was  its  own  great  reward. 
From  the  world  around  Roger  Bacon  could  look  for  and 
found  small  recognition.  No  word  of  acknowledgement 
seems  to  have  reached  its  author  from  the  Pope.  If  we 
may  credit  a  more  recent  story,  his  writings  only  gained 
him  a  prison  from  his  order.  "  Unheard,  forgotten, 
buried,"  the  old  man  died  as  he  had  lived,  and  it  has 
been  reserved  for  later  ages  to  roll  away  the  obscurity 
that  had  gathered  round  his  memory,  and  to  place  first 
in  the  great  roll  of  modern  science  the  name  of  Roger 
Bacon. 

The  failure  of  Bacon  shows  the  overpowering  strength 
of  the  drift  towards  the  practical  studies,  and  above  all 
towards  theology  in  its  scholastic  guise.  Aristotle,  who 
had  been  so  long  held  at  bay  as  the  most  dangerous  foe 
of  mediaeval  faith,  was  now  turned  by  the  adoption  of 
his  logical  method  in  the  discussion  and  definition  of 
theological  dogma  into  its  unexpected  ally.  It  was  this 
very  method  that  led  to  "  that  unprofitable  subtlety  and 
curiosity "  which  Lord  Bacon  notes  as  the  vice  of  the 
scholastic  philosophy.  But  "  certain  it  is  " — to  continue 
the  same  great  thinker's  comment  on  the  Friars — "  that 
if  these  schoolmen  to  their  great  thirst  of  truth  and  un- 
wearied travel  of  wit  had  joined  variety  of  reading  and 
contemplation,  they  had  proved  excellent  lights  to  the 
great  advancement  of  all  learning  and  knowledge." 
What,  amidst  all  their  errors,  they  undoubtedly  did  was 
to  insist  on  the  necessity  of  rigid  demonstration  and  a 
more  exact  use  of  words,  to  introduce  a  clear  and  meth- 
odical treatment  of  all  subjects  into  discussion,  and 
above  all  to  substitute  an  appeal  to  reason  for  unques- 
tioning obedience  to  authority.  It  was  by  this  critical 
tendency,  by  the  new  clearness  and  precision  which 
scholasticism  gave  to  inquiry,  that  in  spite  of  the  trivial 
questions  with  which  it  often  concerned  itself  it  trained 
the  human  mind  through  the  next  two  centuries  to  a 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  251 

temper  which  fitted  it  to  profit  by  the  great  disclosure 
of  knowledge  that  brought  about  the  Renascence.  And 
it  is  to  the  same  spirit  of  fearless  inquiry  as  well  as  to 
the  strong  popular  sympathies  which  their  very  constitu- 
tion necessitated  that  we  must  attribute  the  influence 
which  the  Friars  undoubtedly  exerted  in  the  coming 
Struggle  between  the  people  and  the  Crown.  Their  pos- 
ition is  clearly  and  strongly  marked  throughout  the 
whole  contest.  The  University  of  Oxford,  which  soon 
fell  under  the  direction  of  their  teaching,  stood  first  in 
its  resistance  to  Papal  exactions  and  its  claim  of  English 
liberty.  The  classes  in  the  towns,  on  whom  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Friars  told  most  directly,  were  steady  sup- 
porters of  freedom  throughout  the  Barons'  Wars. 

Politically  indeed  the  teaching  of  the  schoolmen  was 
of  immense  value,  for  it  set  on  a  religious  basis  and  gave 
an  intellectual  form  to  the  constitutional  theory  of  the 
relations  between  King  and  people  which  was  slowly 
emerging  from  the  struggle  with  the  Crown.  In  assum- 
ing the  responsibility  of  a  Christian  king  to  God  for  the 
good  government  of  his  realm,  in  surrounding  the  pledges 
whether  of  ruler  or  ruled  with  religious  sanctions,  the 
mediseval  Church  entered  its  protest  against  any  personal 
despotism.  The  schoolmen  pushed  further  still  to  the 
doctrine  of  a  contract  between  king  and  people  ;  and 
their  trenchant  logic  made  short  work  of  the  royal  claims 
to  irresponsible  power  and  unquestioning  obedience. 
"  He  who  would  be  in  truth  a  king,"  ran  a  poem  which 
embodies  their  teaching  at  this  time  in  pungent  verse — 
"  he  is  a  '  free  king  '  indeed  if  he  rightly  rule  himself  and 
his  realm.  All  things  are  lawful  to  him  for  the  govern- 
ment of  his  realm,  but  nothing  is  lawful  to  him  for  its 
destruction.  It  is  one  thing  to  rule  according  to  a  king's 
duty,  another  to  destroy  a  kingdom  by  resisting  the  law." 
"  Let  the  community  of  the  realm  advise,  and  let  it  be 
known  what  the  generality,  to  whom  their  laws  are  best 
known,  think  on  the  matter.  They  who  are  ruled  by  the 
laws  know  those  laws  best ;  they  who  make  daily  trial  of 
them  are  best  acquainted  with  them  ;  and  since  it  is  their 
own  affairs  which  are  at  stake  they  will  take  the  more 


252  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

care  and  will  act  with  an  eye  to  their  own  peace."  "  It 
concerns  the  community  to  see  what  sort  of  men  ought 
justly  to  be  chosen  for  the  weal  of  the  realm."  The 
constitutional  restrictions  on  the  royal  authorit}',  the  right 
of  the  whole  nation  to  deliberate  and  decide  on  its  own 
affairs  and  to  have  a  voice  in  the  selection  of  the  adminis- 
trators of  government,  had  never  been  so  clearly  stated 
before.  But  the  importance  of  the  Friar's  work  lay  in  this, 
that  the  work  of  the  scholar  was  supplemented  by  that  of 
the  popular  preacher.  The  theory  of  government  wrought 
out  in  cell  and  lecture-room  was  carried  over  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land  by  the  mendicant  brother,  beg- 
ging his  way  from  town  to  town,  chatting  with  farmer  or 
housewife  at  the  cottage  door,  and  setting  up  his  port- 
able pulpit  in  village  green  or  market-place.  His  open- 
air  sermons,  ranging  from  impassioned  devotion  to  coarse 
story  and  homely  mother  wit,  became  the  journals  as 
well  as  the  homilies  of  the  day ;  political  and  social 
questions  found  place  in  them  side  by  side  with  spiritual 
matters ;  and  the  rudest  countryman  learned  his  tale  of 
a  king's  oppression  or  a  patriot's  hopes  as  he  listened  to 
the  rambling  passionate,  humorous  discourse  of  the 
begging  friar. 

Never  had  there  been  more  need  of  such  a  political 
education  of  the  whole  people  than  at  the  moment  we 
have  reached.  For  the  triumph  of  the  Charter,  the  con- 
stitutional government  of  Governor  and  Justiciar,  had 
rested  mainly  on  the  helplessness  of  the  King.  As  boy 
or  youth,  Henry  the  Third  had  bowed  to  the  control  of 
William  Marshal  or  Langton  or  Hubert  de  Burgh.  But 
he  was  now  grown  to  manhood,  and  his  character  was 
from  this  hour  to  tell  on  the  events  of  his  reign.  From 
the  cruelty,  the  lust,  the  impiety  of  his  father  the  young 
King  was  absolutely  free.  There  was.  a  geniality,  a 
vivacity,  a  refinement  in  his  temper  which  won  a  personal 
affection  for  him  even  in  his  worst  days  from  some 
who  bitterly  censured  his  rule.  The  Abbey-church 
of  Westminster,  with  which  he  replaced  the  rule  minster 
of  the  Confessor,  remains  a  monument  of  his  artistic 
taste.  He  was  a  patron  and  friend  of  men  of  letters,  and 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  253 

himself  skilled  in  the  "  gay  science  "  of  the  troubadour. 
But  of  the  political  capacity  which  was  the  characteristic 
of  his  house  he  had  little  or  none.  Profuse,  changeable, 
false  from  sheer  meanness  of  spirit,  impulsive  alike  in 
good  and  ill,  unbridled  in  temper  and  tongue,  reckless  in 
insult  and  wit,  Henry's  delight  was  in  the  display  of  an 
empty  and  prodigal  magnificence,  his  one  notion  of 
government  was  a  dream  of  arbitrary  power.  But  frivolous 
as  the  king's  mood  Avas,  he  clung  with  a  weak  man's 
obstinacy  to  a  distinct  line  of  policy  ;  and  this  was  the 
policy  not  of  Hubert  or  Langton  but  of  John.  He 
cherished  the  hope  of  recovering  his  heritage  across  the 
sea.  He  believed  in  the  absolute  power  of  the  Crown  ; 
and  looked  on  the  pledges  of  the  Great  Charter  as 
promises  which  force  had  wrested  from  the  King  and 
which  force  could  wrest  back  again.  France  was  tell- 
ing more  and  more  on  English  opinion  ;  and  the  claim 
which  the  French  kings  were  advancing  to  a  divine  and 
absolute  power  gave  a  sanction  in  Henry's  mind  to  the 
claim  of  absolute  authority  which  was  still  maintained 
by  his  favorite  advisers  in  the  royal  council.  Above  all 
he  clung  to  the  alliance  with  the  Papacy.  Henry  was 
personally  devout ;  and  his  devotion  only  bound  him  the 
more  firmly  to  his  father's  system  of  friendship  with 
Rome  Gratitude  and  self-interest  alike  bound  him  to 
the  Papal  See.  Rome  had  saved  him  from  ruin  as  a 
child  ;  its  legate  had  set  the  crown  on  his  head  ;  its 
threats  and  excommunications  had  foiled  Louis  and  built 
up  again  a  royal  party.  Above  all  it  was  Rome  which 
could  alone  free  him  from  his  oath  to  the  Charter,  and 
which  could  alone  defend  him  if  like  his  father  he  had 
to  front  the  baronage  in  arms. 

His  temper  was  now  to  influence  the  whole  system  of 
government.  In  1227  Henry  declared  himself  of  age ; 
and  though  Hubert  still  remained  Justiciar  every  year 
saw  him  more  powerless  in  his  struggle  with  the  ten- 
dencies of  the  King.  The  death  of  Stephen  Langton  in 
1228  was  yet  a  heavier  blow  to  English  freedom.  In 
persuading  Rome  to  withdraw  her  Legate  the  Primate 
had  averted  a  conflict  between  the  national  desire  for 


HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

self-government  and  the  Papal  claims  of  overlordship. 
But  his  death  gave  the  signal  for  a  more  serious  struggle, 
for  it  was  in  the  oppression  of  the  Church  of  England  by 
the  Popes  through  the  reign  of  Henry  that  the  little  rift 
first  opened  which  was  destined  to  widen  into  the  gulf 
that  parted  the  one  from  the  other  at  the  Reformation. 
In  the  mediaeval  theory  of  the  Papacy,  as  Innocent  and 
his  successors  held  it,  Christendom,  as  a  spiritual  realm 
of  which  the  Popes  were  the  head,  took  the  feudal  form 
of  the  secular  realms  which  lay  within  its  pale.  The 
Pope  was  its  sovereign,  the  Bishops  were  his  barons,  and 
the  clergy  were  his  under  vassals.  As  the  King  de- 
manded aids  and  subsidies  in  case  of  need  from  his  liege- 
men, so  in  the  theory  of  Rome  might  the  head  of  the 
Church  demand  aid  in  need  from  the  priesthood.  And 
at  this  moment  the  need  of  the  Popes  was  sore.  Rome 
had  plunged  into  her  desperate  conflict  with  the  Em- 
peror, Frederick  the  Second,  and  was  looking  everywhere 
for  the  means  of  recruiting  her  drained  exchequer.  On 
England  she  believed  herself  to  have  more  than  a  spirit- 
ual claim  for  support.  She  regarded  the  kingdom  as  a 
vassal  kingdom,  and  as  bound  to  aid  its  overlord.  It  was 
only  by  the  promise  of  a  heavy  subsidy  that  Henry  in 
1229  could  buy  the  Papal  confirmation  of  Langton's  suc- 
cessor. But  the  baronage  was  of  other  mind  than  Henry 
as  to  this  claim  of  overlordship,  and  the  demand  of  an 
aid  to  Rome  from  the  laity  was  at  once  rejected  by  them. 
Her  spiritual  claim  over  the  allegiance  of  the  clergy 
however  remained  to  fall  back  upon,  and  the  clergy 
were  in  the  Pope's  hand.  Gregory  the  Ninth  had  already 
claimed  for  the  Papal  see  a  right  of  nomination  to  some 
prebends  in  each  cathedral  church ;  he  now  demanded  a 
tithe  of  all  the  movables  of  the  priesthood,  and  a  threat 
of  excommunication  silenced  their  murmurs.  Exaction 
followed  exaction  as  the  needs  of  the  Papal  treasury 
grew  greater.  The  very  rights  of  la}r  patrons  were  set 
aside,  and  under  the  name  of  "  reserves  "  presentations 
to  English  benefices  were  sold  in  the  Papal  market, 
while  Italian  clergy  were  quartered  on  the  best  livings 
of  the  Church. 


THE   CHARTER.      1201—1291.  255 

The  general  indignation  at  last  found  vent  in  a  wide 
conspiracy.  In  1231  letters  from  "  the  whole  body  of 
those  who  prefer  to  die  rather  than  be  ruined  by  the  Ro- 
mans "  were  scattered  over  the  kingdom  by  armed  men ; 
tithes  gathered  for  the  Pope  or  the  foreign  priests  were 
seized  and  given  to  the  poor ;  the  Papal  collectors  were 
beaten  and  their  bulls  trodden  under  foot.  The  remon- 
strances of  Rome  only  made  clearer  the  national  char- 
acter of  the  movement ;  but  as  inquiry  went  on  the  hand 
of  the  Justiciar  himself  was  seen  to  have  been  at  work. 
Sheriffs  had  stood  idly  by  while  violence  was  done  ;  royal 
letters  had  been  shown  by  the  rioters  as  approving  their 
acts ;  and  the  Pope  openly  laid  the  charge  of  the  out- 
break on  the  secret  connivance  of  Hubert  de  Burgh. 
No  charge  could  have  been  more  fatal  to  Hubert  in  the 
mind  of  the  King.  But  he  was  already  in  full  collision 
with  the  Justiciar  on  other  grounds.  Henry  was  eager 
to  vindicate  his  right  to  the  great  heritage  his  father  had 
lost :  the  Gascons,  who  still  clung  to  him,  not  because 
they  loved  England  but  because  they  hated  France, 
spurred  him  to  war  ;  and  in  1229  a  secret  invitation  came 
from  the  Norman  barons.  But  while  Hubert  held  power 
no  serious  effort  was  made  to  carry  on  a  foreign  strife. 
The  Norman  call  was  rejected  through  his  influence,  and 
when  a  great  armament  gathered  at  Portsmouth  for  a 
campaign  in  Poitou  it  dispersed  for  want  of  transport  and 
supplies.  The  young  King  drew  his  sword  and  rushed 
madly  on  the  Justiciar,  charging  him  with  treason  and 
corruption  by  the  gold  of  France.  But  the  quarrel  was 
appeased  and  the  expedition  deferred  for  the  year.  In 
1230  Henry  actually  took  the  field  in  Britanny  and  Poi- 
tou, but  the  failure  of  the  campaign  was  again  laid  at  the 
door  of  Hubert  whose  opposition  was  said  to  have  pre- 
vented a  decisive  engagement.  It  was  at  this  moment 
that  the  Papal  accusation  filled  up  the  measure  of  Henry's 
wrath  against  his  minister.  In  the  summer  of  1232  he 
was  deprived  of  his  office  of  Justiciar,  and  dragged  from 
a  chapel  at  Brentwood  where  threats  of  death  had  driven 
him  to  take  sanctuary.  A  smith  who  was  ordered  to 
shackle  him  stoutly  refused.  "  I  will  die  any  death,"  he 


266  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

said,  "before  I  put  iron  on  the  man  who  freed  England 
from  the  stranger  and  saved  Dover  from  France."  The 
remonstrances  of  the  Bishop  of  London  forced  the  King 
to  replace  Hubert  in  sanctuary,  but  hunger  compelled 
him  to  surrender ;  he  was  thrown  a  prisoner  into  the 
Tower,  and  though  soon  released  he  remained  powerless 
in  the  realm.  His  fall  left  England  without  a  check  to 
the  rule  of  Henry  himself. 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE   BARONS'    WAR. 
1282—1272. 

ONCE  master  of  his  realm,  Henry  the  Third  was  quick 
to  declare  his  plan  of  government.  The  two  great  checks 
on  a  merely  personal  rule  lay  as  yet  in  the  authority  of 
the  great  ministers  of  State  and  in  the  national  character 
of  the  administrative  body  which  had  been  built  up  by 
Henry  the  Second.  Both  of  these  checks  Henry  at  once 
set  himself  to  remove.  He  would  be  his  own  minister. 
The  Jiasticiar  ceased  to  be  the  Lieutenant-General  of  the 
King  and  dwindled  into  a  presiding  judge  of  the  law- 
courts.  The  Chancellor  had  grown  into  a  great  officer 
of  State,  and  in  1226  this  office  had  been  conferred  on 
the  Bishop  of  Chichester  by  the  advice  and  consent  of 
the  Great  Council.  But  Henry  succeeded  in  wresting 
the  seal  from  him  and  naming  to  this  as  to  other  offices 
at  his  pleasure.  His  policy  was  to  entrust  all  high  posts 
of  government  to  mere  clerks  of  the  royal  chapel ;  trained 
administrators,  but  wholly  dependent  on  the  royal  will. 
He  found  equally  dependent  agents  of  administration  by 
surrounding  himself  with  foreigners.  The  return  of 
Peter  des  Roches  to  the  royal  councils  was  the  first  sign 
of  the  new  system ;  and  hosts  of  hungry  Poitevins  and 
Bretons  were  summoned  over  to  occupy  the  royal  castles 
and  fill  the  judicial  and  administrative  posts  about  the 
Court.  The  King's  marriage  in  1236  to  Eleanor  of  Pro- 
vence was  followed  by  the  arrival  in  England  of  the  new 
Queen's  uncles.  The  "  Savoy,"  as  his  house  in  the  Strand 
was  named,  still  recalls  Peter  of  Savoy  who  arrived  five 
years  later  to  take  for  a  while  the  chief  place  at  Henry's 

17 


258  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

council-board  ;  another  brother,  Boniface,  was  consecrated 
on  Archbishop  Edmund's  death  to  the  highest  post  in  the 
realm  save  the  Crown  itself,  the  Archbishopric  of 
Canterbury.  The  young  Primate,  like  his  brother, 
brought  with  him  foreign  fashions  strange  enough  to 
English  folk.  His  armed  retainers  pillaged  the  markets. 
His  own  archiepiscopal  fist  felled  to  the  ground  the  prior 
of  St.  Bartholomew-by-Smithfield  who  opposed  his  visita- 
tion. London  was  roused  by  the  outrage  ;  on  the  King's 
refusal  to  do  justice  a  noisy  crowd  of  citizens  surrounded 
the  Primate's  house  at  Lambeth  with  cries  of  vengeance, 
and  the  "  Handsome  archbishop,"  as  his  followers  styled 
him,  was  glad  to  escape  over  sea.  This  brood  of  Proven- 
9als  was  followed  in  1243  by  the  arrival  of  the  Poite- 
vin  relatives  of  John's  queen,  Isabella  of  Angouleme. 
Aymer  was  made  Bishop  of  Winchester ;  William  of 
Valence  received  at  a  later  time  the  earldom  of  Pembroke. 
Even  the  King's  jester  was  a  Poitevin.  Hundreds  of 
their  dependants  followed  these  great  nobles  to  find  a 
fortune  in  the  English  realm.  The  Poitevin  lords  brought 
in  their  train  a  bevy  of  ladies  in  search  of  husbands,  and 
three  English  earls  who  were  in  royal  wardship  were 
wedded  by  the  King  to  foreigners.  The  whole  machinery 
of  administration  passed  into  the  hands  of  men  who  were 
ignorant  and  contemptuous  of  the  principles  of  English 
government  or  English  law.  Their  rule  was  a  mere  an- 
archy;  the  very  retainers  of  the  royal  household  turned 
robbers  and  pillaged  foreign  merchants  in  the  precincts 
of  the  Court ;  corruption  invaded  the  judicature ;  at  the 
close  of  this  period  of  misrule  Henry  de  Bath,  a  justi- 
ciary, was  proved  to  have  openly  taken  bribes  and  to  have 
adjudged  to  himself  disputed  estates. 

That  misgovernment  of  this  kind  should  have  gone  on 
unchecked  in  defiance  of  the  provisions  of  the  Charter 
was  owing  to  the  disunion  and  sluggishness  of  the  Eng- 
lish baronage.  On  the  first  arrival  of  the  foreigners 
Richard,  the  Earl  Mareschal,  a  son  of  the  great  Regent, 
stood  forth  as  their  leader  to  demand  the  expulsion  of 
the  strangers  from  the  royal  Council.  Though  deserted 
by  the  bulk  of  the  nobles  he  defeated  the  foreign  troopa 


THB  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  259 

sent  against  him  and  forced  the  King  to  treat  for  peace. 
But  at  this  critical  moment  the  Earl  was  drawn  by  an 
intrigue  of  Peter  des  Roches  to  Ireland  ;  he  fell  in  a 
petty  skirmish,  and  the  barons  were  left  without  a  head. 
The  interposition  of  a  new  primate,  Edmund  of  Abing- 
don,  forced  the  King  to  dismiss  Peter  from  court;  but 
there  was  no  real  change  of  system,  and  the  remon- 
strances of  the  Archbishop  and  of  Robert  Grosseteste, 
the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  remained  fruitless.  In  the  long 
interval  of  misrule  the  financial  straits  of  the  King  forced 
him  to  heap  exaction  on  exaction.  The  Forest  Laws 
were  used  as  a  means  of  extortion,  sees  and  abbeys  were 
kept  vacant,  loans  were  wrested  from  lords  and  prelates, 
the  Court  itself  lived  at  free  quarters  wherever  it  moved. 
Supplies  of  this  kind  however  were  utterly  insufficient 
to  defray  the  cost  of  the  King's  prodigality.  A  sixth  of 
the  royal  revenue  was  wasted  in  pensions  to  foreign 
favorites.  The  debts  of  the  Crown  amounted  to  four 
times  its  annual  income.  Henry  was  forced  to  appeal 
for  aid  to  the  great  Council  of  the  realm,  and  aid  was 
granted  in  1237  on  promise  of  control  in  its  expenditure 
and  on  condition  that  the  King  confirmed  the  Charter. 
But  Charter  and  promise  were  alike  disregarded ;  and 
in  1242  the  resentment  of  the  barons  expressed  itself  in 
a  determined  protest  and  a  refusal  of  further  subsidies. 
In  spite  of  their  refusal  however  Henry  gathered  money 
enough  for  a  costly  expedition  for  the  recovery  of  Poitou. 
The  attempt  ended  in  failure  and  shame.  At  Taillebourg 
the  King's  force  fled  in  disgraceful  rout  before  the  French 
as  far  as  Saintes,  and  only  the  sudden  illness  of  Lewis 
the  Ninth  and  a  disease  which  scattered  his  army  saved 
Bordeaux  from  the  conquerors.  The  treasury  was  utterly 
drained,  and  Henry  was  driven  in  1244  to  make  a  fresh 
appeal  with  his  own  mouth  to  the  baronage.  But  the 
barons  had  now  rallied  to  a  plan  of  action,  and  we  can 
hardly  fail  to  attribute  their  union  to  the  man  who  ap- 
pears at  their  head.  This  was  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  Si- 
mon of  Montfort. 

Simon  was  tjie  son  of  another  Simon  of  Montfort,  whose 
name  had  become  memorable  for  his  ruthless   crusade 


260  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

against  the  Albigensian  heretics  in  Southern  Gaul,  and 
who  had  inherited  the  Earldom  of  Leicester  through  his 
mother,  a  sister  and  co-heiress  of  the  last  Earl  of  the 
house  of  Beaumont.  But  as  Simon's  tendencies  were  for 
the  most  part  French  John  had  kept  the  revenues  of  the- 
earldom  in  his  own  hands,  and  on  his  death  the  claim  of 
his  elder  son,  Amaury,  was  met  by  the  refusal  of  Henry 
the  Third  to  accept  a  divided  allegiance.  The  refusal 
marks  the  rapid  growth  of  that  sentiment  of  nationality 
which  the  loss  of  Normandy  had  brought  home.  Amaury 
chose  to  remain  French,  and  by  a  family  arrangement 
with  the  King's  sanction  the  honor  of  Leicester  passed 
in  1231  to  his  younger  brother  Simon.  His  choice  made 
Simon  an  Englishman,  but  his  foreign  blood  still  moved 
the  jealousy  of  the  barons,and  this  jealousy  was  quickened 
by  a  secret  match  in  1238  with  Eleanor,  the  King's  sister 
and  widow  of  the  second  William  Marshal.  The  match 
formed  probably  part  of  a  policy  which  Henry  pursued 
throughout  his  reign  of  bringing  the  great  earldoms  into 
closer  connexion  with  the  Crown.  That  of  Chester  had 
fallen  to  the  King  through  the  extinction  of  the  family 
of  its  earls ;  Cornwall  was  held  by  his  brother,  Richard  ; 
Salisbury  by  his  cousin.  Simon's  marriage  linked  the 
Earldom  of  Leicester  to  the  royal  house.  But  it  at  once 
brought  Simon  into  conflict  with  the  nobles  and  the 
Church.  The  baronage,  justly  indignant  that  such  a 
step  should  have  been  taken  without  their  consent,  for 
the  Queen  still  remained  childless  and  Eleanor's  children 
by  one  whom  they  looked  on  as  a  stranger  promised  to  be 
heirs  of  the  Crown,  rose  in  a  revolt  which  failed  only 
through  the  desertion  of  their  head,  Earl  Richard  of 
Cornwall,  who  was  satisfied  with  Earl  Simon's  with- 
drawal from  the  Royal  Council.  The  censures  of  the 
Church  on  Eleanor's  breach  of  a  vow  of  chaste  widow- 
hood which  she  had  made  at  her  first  husband's  death 
were  averted  with  hardly  less  difficulty  by  a  journey  to 
Rome.  It  was  after  a  year  of  trouble  that  Simon  returned 
to  England  to  reap  as  it  seemed  the  fruits  of  his  high 
alliance.  He  was  now  formally  made  Earl  of  Leicester 
and  re-entered  the  Royal  Council.  But  it  is  probable 


THE   CHARTER.     1204—1291.  261 

that  he  still  found  there  the  old  jealousy  which  had 
forced  from  him  a  pledge  of  retirement  after  his  marriage  ; 
and  that  his  enemies  now  succeeded  in  winning  over  the 
King.  In  a  few  months,  at  any  rate,  he  found  the 
changeable  King  alienated  from  him,  he  was  driven  by  a 
burst  of  royal  passion  from  the  realm,  and  was  forced  to 
spend  seven  months  in  France. 

Henry's  anger  passed  as  quickly  as  it  had  risen,  and  in 
the  spring  of  1240  the  Earl  was  again  received  with  honor 
at  court.  It  was  from  this  moment  however  that  his 
position  changed.  As  yet  it  had  been  that  of  a  foreigner, 
confounded  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation  at  large  with  the 
Poitevins  and  Provencals  who  swarmed  about  the  court. 
But  in  the  years  of  retirement  which  followed  Simon's 
return  to  England  his  whole  attitude  was  reversed. 
There  was  as  yet  no  quarrel  with  the  King :  he  followed 
him  in  a  campaign  across  the  Channel,  and  shared  in  his 
defeat  at  Saintes.  But  he  was  a  friend  of  Grosseteste 
and  a  patron  of  the  Friars,  and  became  at  last  known  as 
a  steady  opponent  of  the  misrule  about  him.  When  pre- 
lates and  barons  chose  twelve  representatives  to  confer 
with  Henry  in  1244  Simon  stood  with  Earl  Richard  of 
Cornwall  at  the  head  of  them.  A  definite  plan  of 
reform  disclosed  his  hand.  The  confirmation  of  the 
Charter  was  to  be  followed  by  the  election  of  Justiciar, 
Chancellor,  Treasurer  in  the  Great  Council.  Nor  was 
this  restoration  of  a  responsible  ministry  enough  ;  a  per- 
petual Council  was  to  attend  the  King  and  devise  further 
reforms.  The  plan  broke  against  Henry's  resistance  and 
a  Papal  prohibition  ;  but  from  this  time  the  Earl  took 
his  stand  in  the  front  rank  of  the  patriot  leaders.  The 
struggle  of  the  following  years  was  chiefly  with  the  ex- 
actions of  the  Papacy,  and  Simon  was  one  of  the  first  to 
sign  the  protest  which  the  Parliament  in  1246  addressed 
to  the  court  of  Rome.  He  was  present  at  the  Lent  Par- 
liament of  1248,  and  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  he  shared 
in  its  bold  rebuke  of  the  King's  misrule  and  its  renewed 
demand  for  the  appointment  of  the  higher  officers  of 
state  by  the  Council.  It  was  probably  a  sense  of  the 
danger  of  leaving  at  home  such  a  centre  of  all  efforts 


262  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

after  reform  that  brought  Henry  to  send  him  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1248  as  Seneschal  of  Gascony  to  save  for  the 
Crown  the  last  of  its  provinces  over  sea. 

Threatened  by  France  and  by  Navarre  without  as  well 
as  by  revolt  within,  the  loss  of  Gascony  seemed  close  at 
hand ;  but  in  a  few  months  the  stern  rule  of  the  new 
Seneschal  had  quelled  every  open  foe  within  or  without 
its  bounds.  To  bring  the  province  to  order  proved  a 
longer  and  a  harder  task.  Its  nobles  were  like  the  robber- 
nobles  of  the  Rhine  :  "they  rode  the  country  by  night," 
wrote  the  Earl,  "  like  thieves,in  parties  of  twenty  or  thirty 
or  forty,"  and  gathered  in  leagues  against  the  Seneschal, 
who  set  himself  to  exact  their  dues  to  the  crown  and  to 
shield  merchant  and  husbandman  from  their  violence. 
For  four  years  Earl  Simon  steadily  warred  down  these 
robber  bands,  storming  castles  where  there  was  need, 
and  bridling  the  wilder  country  with  a  chain  of  forts. 
Hard  as  the  task  was,  his  real  difficulty  lay  at  home. 
Henry  sent  neither  money  nor  men  ;  and  the  Earl  had  to 
raise  both  from  his  own  resources,  while  the  men  whom 
he  was  fighting  found  friends  in  Henry's  council-chamber. 
Again  and  again  Simon  was  recalled  to  answer  charges 
of  tyranny  and  extortion  made  by  the  Gascon  nobles  and 
pressed  by  his  enemies  at  home  on  the  King.  Henry's 
feeble  and  impulsive  temper  left  him  open  to  pressure 
like  this ;  and  though  each  absence  of  the  Earl  from  the 
province  was  a  signal  for  fresh  outbreaks  of  disorder 
which  only  his  presence  repressed,  the  deputies  of  its 
nobles  were  still  admitted  to  the  council-table  and  com- 
missions sent  over  to  report  on  the  Seneschal's  adminis- 
tration. The  strife  came  to  a  head  in  1252,  when  the 
commissioners  reported  that  stern  as  Simon's  rule  had 
been  the  case  was  one  in  which  sternness  was  needful. 
The  English  barons  supported  Simon,  and  in  the  face  of 
their  verdict  Henry  was  powerless.  But  the  King  was 
now  wholly  with  his  enemies ;  and  his  anger  broke 
out  in  a  violent  altercation.  The  Earl  offered  to  resign 
his  post  if  the  money  he  had  spent  was  repaid  him,  and 
appealed  to  Henry's  word.  Henry  hotly  retorted  that  he 
was  bound  by  no  promise  to  a  false  traitor.  Simon  at 


THE   CHARTEK.      1204 — 1291.  263 

once  gave  Henry  the  lie ;  "  and  but  that  thou  bearest  the 
name  of  King  it  had  been  a  bad  hour  for  thee  when  thou 
utteredst  such  a  word  !  "  A  formal  reconciliation  was 
brought  about,  and  the  Earl  once  more  returned  to  Gas- 
cony,  but  before  winter  had  come  he  was  forced  to  with- 
draw to  France.  The  greatness  of  his  reputation  was 
shown  in  an  offer  which  its  nobles  made  him-  of  the  re- 
gency of  their  realm  during  the  absence  of  King  Louis 
from  the  land.  But  the  offer  was  refused ;  and  Henry, 
who  had  himself  undertaken  the  pacification  of  Gascony, 
was  glad  before  the  close  of  1253  to  recall  its  old  ruler 
to  do  the  work  he  had  failed  to  do. 

The  Earl's  character  had  now  thoroughly  developed. 
He  inherited  the  strict  and  severe  piety  of  his  father  ;  he 
was  assiduous  in  his  attendance  on  religious  services 
whether  by  night  or  day.  In  his  correspondence  with 
Adam  Marsh  we  see  him  finding  patience  under  his 
Gascon  troubles  in  a  perusal  of  the  Book  of  Job.  His 
life  was  pure  and  singularly  temperate ;  he  was  noted 
for  his  scant  indulgence  in  meat,  drink,  or  sleep.  Socially 
he  was  cheerful  and  pleasant  in  talk ;  but  his  natural 
temper  was  quick  and  ardent,  his  sense  of  honor  keen, 
his  speech  rapid  and  trenchant.  His  impatience  of  con- 
tradiction, his  fiery  temper,  were  in  fact  the  great  stum- 
bling-blocks in  his  after  career.  His  best  friends  marked 
honestly  this  fault,  and  it  shows  the  greatness  of  the  man 
that  he  listened  to  their  remonstrances.  "  Better  is  a 
patient  man,"  writes  honest  Friar  Adam,  "  than  a  strong 
man,  and  he  who  can  rule  his  own  temper  than  he  who 
storms  a  city."  But  the  one  characteristic  which  over- 
mastered all  was  what  men  at  that  time  called  his  "  con- 
stancy," the  firm  immovable  resolve  which  trampled 
even  death  under  foot  in  its  loyalty  to  the  right.  The 
motto  which  Edward  the  First  chose  as  his  device, 
"  Keep  troth,"  was  far  truer  as  the  device  of  Earl 
Simon.  We  see  in  his  correspondence  with  what  a  clear 
discernment  of  its  difficulties  both  at  home  and  abroad 
he  "  thought  it  unbecoming  to  decline  the  danger  of 
so  great  an  exploit "  as  the  reduction  of  Gascony  to 
peace  and  order ;  but  once  undertaken,  he  persevered  in 


264  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

spite  of  the  opposition  he  met  with,  the  failure  of  all  sup- 
port or  funds  from  England,  and  the  King's  desertion  of 
his  cause,  till  the  work  was  done.  There  was  the  same 
steadiness  of  will  and  purpose  in  his  patriotism.  The 
letters  of  Robert  Grosseteste  show  how  early  Simon  had 
learned  to  sympathize  with  the  Bishop  in  his  resistance 
to  Rome,  and  at  the  crisis  of  the  contest  he  offered  him 
his  own  support  and  that  of  his  associates.  But  Robert 
passed  away,  and  as  the  tide  of  misgovernmerit  mounted 
higher  and  higher  the  Earl  silently  trained  himself  for 
the  day  of  trial.  The  fruit  of  his  self-discipline  was  seen 
when  the  crisis  came.  While  other  men  wavered  and 
faltered  and  fell  away,  the  enthusiastic  love  of  the  people 
clung  to  the  grave,  stern  soldier  who  "  stood  like  a 
pillar,"  unshaken  by  promise  or  threat  or  fear  of  death, 
by  the  oath  he  had  sworn. 

While  Simon  had  been  warring  with  Gascon  rebels 
affairs  in  England  had  been  going  from  bad  to  worse. 
The  scourge  of  Papal  taxation  fell  heavier  on  the  clergy. 
After  vain  appeals  to  Rome  and  to  the  King,  Archbishop 
Edmund  retired  to  an  exile  of  despair  at  Pontigny,  and 
tax-gatherer  after  tax-gatherer  with  powers  of  excom- 
munication, suspension  from  orders,  and  presentation  to 
benefices  descended  on  the  unhappy  priesthood.  The 
wholesale  pillage  kindled  a  wide  spirit  of  resistance. 
Oxford  gave  the  signal  by  hunting  a  papal  legate  out  of 
the  city  amid  cries  of  "  usurer  "  and  "  simoniac  "  from 
the  mob  of  students.  Fulk  Fitz-Warenne  in  the  name 
of  the  barons  bade  a  Papal  collector  begone  out  of  Eng- 
land. "  If  you  tarry  hero  three  days  longer,"  he  added, 
"  you  and  your  company  shall  be  cut  to  pieces."  For 
a  time  Henry  himself  was  swept  away  by  the  tide  of 
national  indignation.  Letters  from  the  King,  the  nobles, 
and  the  prelates,  protested  against  the  Papal  exactions, 
and  orders  were  given  that  no  money  should  be  exported 
from  the  realm.  But  the  threat  of  interdict  soon  drove 
Henry  back  on  a  policy  of  spoliation  in  which  he  went 
hand  in  hand  with  Rome.  The  temper  which  this  op- 
pression begot  among  even  the  most  sober  churchmen 
has  been  preserved  for  us  by  an  annalist  whose  pages 


THE    CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  265 

glow  with  the  new  outburst  of  patriotic  feeling.  Mat- 
thew Paris  is  the  greatest,  as  he  in  reality  is  the  last,  of 
our  monastic  historians.  The  school  of  St.  Alban's  sur- 
vived indeed  till  a  far  later  time,  but  its  writers  dwindle 
into  mere  annalists  whose  view  is  bounded  by  the  abbey 
precincts  and  whose  work  is  as  colorless  as  it  is  jejune. 
In  Matthew  the  breadth  and  precision  of  the  narrative,  the 
copiousness  of  his  information  on  topics  whether  national 
or  European,  the  general  fairness  and  justice  of  his  com- 
ments, are  only  surpassed  by  the  patriotic  fire  and  enthu- 
siasm of  the  whole.  He  had  succeeded  Roger  of  Wen- 
do  ver  as  chronicler  at  St.  Alban's;  and  the  Greater 
Chronicle  with  an  abridgment  of  it  which  long  passed 
under  the  name  of  Matthew  of  Westminster,  a  "  History 
of  the  English,"  and  the  "  Lives  of  the  Earlier  Abbots," 
are  only  a  few  among  the  voluminous  works  which  attest 
his  prodigious  industry.  He  was  an  artist  as  well  as  an 
historian,  and  many  of  the  manuscripts  which  are  pre- 
served are  illustrated  by  hrs  own  hand.  A  large  circle  of 
correspondents — bishops  like  Grosseteste,  ministers  like 
Hubert  de  Burgh,  officials  like  Alexander  de  Swereford 
— furnished  him  with  minute  accounts  of  political  and 
ecclesiastical  proceedings.  Pilgrims  from  the  East  and 
Papal  agents  brought  news  of  foreign  events  to  his  scrip  • 
torium  at  St.  Alban's.  He  had  access  to  and  quotes 
largely  from  state  documents,  charters,  and  exchequer 
rolls.  The  frequency  of  royal  visits  to  the  abbey  brought 
him  a  store  of  political  intelligence,  and  Henry  himself 
contributed  to  the  great  chronicle  which  has  preserved 
with  so  terrible  a  faithfulness  the  memory  of  his  weak- 
ness and  misgovernment.  On  one  solemn  feast-da}'  the 
King  recognized  Matthew,  and  bidding  him  sit  on  the 
middle  step  between  the  floor  and  the  throne  begged  him 
to  write  the  story  of  the  day's  proceedings.  While  on  a 
visit  to  St.  Alban's  he  invited  him  to  his  table  and  cham- 
ber, and  enumerated  by  name  two  hundred  and  fifty  of 
the  English  baronies  for  his  information.  But  all  this 
royal  patronage  has  left  little  mark  on  his  work.  "  The 
case,"  as  Matthew  says,  "  of  historical  writers  is  hard,  for 
if  they  tell  the  truth  they  provoke  men,  and  if  they  write 


266  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

what  is  false  they  offend  God."  With  all  the  fulness  of 
the  school  of  court  historians,  such  as  Benedict  and 
Hoveden,  to  which  in  form  he  belonged,  Matthew  Paris 
combines  an  independence  and  patriotism  which  is 
strange  to  their  pages.  He  denounces  with  the  same 
unsparing  energy  the  oppression  of  the  Papacy  and  of  the 
King.  His  point  of  aim  is  neither  that  of  a  courtier  nor 
of  a  churchman  but  of  an  Englishman,  and  the  new 
national  tone  of  his  chronicle  is  but  the  echo  of  a  national 
sentiment  which  at  last  bound  nobles  and  yeomen  and 
churchmen  together  into  a  people  resolute  to  wrest  free- 
dom from  the  Crown. 

The  nation  was  outraged  like  the  church.  Two 
solemn  confirmations  of  the  Charter  failed  to  bring  about 
any  compliance  with  its  provisions.  In  1248,  in  1249, 
and  again  in  1255  the  great  Council  fruitlessly  renewed 
its  demand  for  a  regular  ministry,  and  the  growing 
resolve  of  the  nobles  to  enforce  good  government  was  seen 
in  their  offer  of  a  grant  on  condition  that  the  great  officers 
of  the  Crown  were  appointed  in  the  Council  of  the 
Baronage.  But  Henry  refused  their  offer  with  scorn  and 
sold  his  plate  to  the  citizens  of  London  to  find  payment 
for  his  household.  A  spirit  of  mutinous  defiance  broke 
out  on  the  failure  of  all  legal  remedy.  When  the  Earl 
of  Norfolk  refused  him  aid  Henry  answered  with  a  threat. 
"  I  will  send  reapers  and  reap  your  fields  for  you,"  he 
said.  "  And  I  will  sent  you  back  the  heads  of  your 
reapers,"  replied  the  Earl.  Hampered  by  the  profusion 
of  the  court  and  the  refusal  of  supplies,  the  Crown  was 
in  fact  penniless  ;  and  yet  never  was  money  more  wanted, 
for  a  trouble  which  had  long  pressed  upon  the  English 
kings  had  now  grown  to  a  height  that  called  for  decisive 
action.  Even  his  troubles  at  home  could  not  blind  Henry 
to  the  need  of  dealing  with  the  difficulty  of  Wales.  Of 
the  three  Welsh  states  into  which  all  that  remained  un- 
conquered  of  Britain  had  been  broken  by  the  victories  of 
Deorham  and  Chester,  two  had  long  ceased  to  exist. 
The  country  between  the  Clyde  and  the  Dee  had  been 
gradually  absorbed  by  the  conquests  of  Northumbria  and 
the  growth  of  the  Scot  monarchy.  West  Wales,  between 


THE   CHABTER.      1204 — 1291.  267 

the  British  Channel  and  the  estuary  of  the  Severn,  had 
yielded  to  the  sword  of  Ecgberht.     But  a  fiercer  resist- 
ance prolonged  the   independence  of  the  great   central 
portion  which  alone  in  modern  language  preserves  the 
name  of  Wales.     Comprising  in  itself  the   largest  and 
most  powerful  of  the  British  kingdoms,  it  was  aided  in 
its  struggle  against  Mercia  by  the  weakness  of  its  assailant, 
the  youngest  and  feeblest  of  the  English  states,  as  well 
as  by  an  internal  warfare  which  distracted  the  energies 
of  the  invaders.     But  Mercia  had  no    sooner   ris-'i-n    to 
supremacy  among  the  English  kingdoms  than  it  took  the 
work   of  conquest  vigorously  in   hand.     Offa  tore  from 
Wales  the  border  land  between  the  Severn  and  the  Wye  ; 
the  raids  of  his  successors  carried  fire  and  sword  into  the 
heart  of  the   country  ;  and    an  acknowledgment  of  the 
Mercian     oveiiordship     was     wrested    from   the   Welsh 
princes.     On  the  fall  of  Mercia  this  overlordship  passed 
to  the  West-Saxon    kings,  and  the  Laws  of  Howel  Dda 
own  the  payment  of  a  yearly  tribute  by  "  the  prince  of 
Aberffraw  "  to  "  the  King  of  London."     The  weakness 
of  England    during    her  long  struggle  with  the  Danes 
revived   the  hopes  of  British  independence ;  it  was  the 
co-operation  of  the  Welsh  on  which  the  Northmen  reck- 
oned in  their  attack  on  the  house  of  Ecgberht.     But  with 
the  fall  of  the  Danelagh   the  British  princes  were  again 
brought  to  submission,  and  when  in  the  midst  of  the  con- 
fessor's reign  the  Welsh  seized  on  a  quarrel  between  the 
houses  of  Leofric    and  Godwine  to  cross  the  border  and 
carry  their   attacks   into   England  itself,  the  victories  of 
Harold  re-asserted  the  English  supremacy.    Disembarking 
on  the  coast  his  light-armed  troops  he  penetrated  to^  the 
heart  of  the  mountains,  and  the  successors  of  the  Welsh 
prince    Gruffydd,  whose    head    was    the    trophy  of  the 
campaign,  swore  to  observe  the  old  fealty  and  render  the 
whole  tribute  to  the  English  Crown. 

A  far  more  desperate  struggle  began  when  the  wave 
of  Norman  conquest  broke  on  the  Welsh  frontier.  A 
chain  of  great  earldoms,  settled  by  William  along  the 
border-land,  at  once  bridled  the  old  marauding  forays. 
From  his  county  palatine  of  Chester  Hugh  the  Wolf 


268  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

harried  Flintshire  into  a  desert,  Robert  of  Belesme  in  his 
earldom  of  Shrewsbury  "  slew  the  Welsh,"  says  a  chron- 
icler, "  like  sheep,  conquered  them,  enslaved  them  and 
flayed  them  with  nails  of  iron."  The  earldom  of  Glou- 
cester curbed  Britain  along  the  lower  Severn.  Backed 
by  these  greater  baronies  a  horde  of  lesser  adventurers  ob- 
tained the  royal  "  licence  to  make  conquest  on  the  Welsh." 
Monmouth  and  Abergavenny  were  seized  and  guarded  by 
Norman  castellans;  Bernard  of  Neufmarche'  won  the 
lordship  of  Brecknock  ;  Roger  of  Montgomery  raised  the 
town  and  fortress  in  Powysland  which  still  preserves  his 
name.  A  great  rising  of  the  whole  people  in  the  days  of 
the  second  William  won  back  some  of  this  Norman  spoil. 
The  new  castle  of  Montgomery  was  burned,  Brecknock 
and  Cardigan  were  cleared  of  the  invaders,  and  the  Welsh 
poured  ravaging  over  the  English  border.  Twice  the 
Red  King  carried  his  arms  fruitlessly  among  the  moun- 
tains against  enemies  who  took  refuge  in  their  fastnesses 
till  famine  and  hardship  drove  his  broken  host  into  retreat. 
The  wiser  policy  of  Henry  the  First  fell  back  on  his 
father's  system  of  gradual  conquest.  A  new  tide  of  in- 
vasion flowed  along  the  southern  coast,  where  the  land 
was  level  and  open  and  accessible  from  the  sea.  The 
attack  was  aided  by  strife  in  the  country  itself.  Robert 
Fitz-Hamo,  the  lord  of  Gloucester,  was  summoned  to  his 
aid  by  a  Welsh  chieftain ;  and  his  defeat  of  Rhys  ap 
Tewdor,  the  last  prince  under  whom  Southern  Wales  was 
united,  produced  an  anarchy  which  enabled  Robert  to 
land  safely  on  the  coast  of  Glamorgan,  to  conquer  the 
country  round,  and  to  divide  it  among  his  soldiers.  A 
force  of  Flemings  and  Englishmen  followed  the  Earl  of 
Clare  as  he  landed  near  Milford  Haven  and  pushing  back 
the  British  inhabitants  settled  a  "  Little  England  "  in  the 
present  Pembrokeshire.  A  few  daring  adventurers  ac- 
companied the  Norman  Lord  of  Kemeys  into  Cardigan, 
where  land  might  be  had  for  the  winning  by  any  one  who 
would  "  wage  war  on  the  Welsh." 

It  was  at  this  moment,  when  the  utter  subjugation  of 
the  British  race  seemed  at  hand,  that  a  new  outburst  of 
energy  rolled  back  the  tide  of  invasion  and  changed  the 


THE   CHARTER.       1204 — 1291.  269 

fitful  resistance  of  the  separate  Welsh  provinces  into  a 
national  effort  to  regain  independence.  To  all  outer 
seeming  Wales  had  become  utterly  barbarous.  Stripped 
of  every  vestige  of  the  older  Roman  civilization  by  ages  of 
bitter  warfare,  of  civil  strife,  of  estrangement  from  the 
general  culture  of  Christendom,  the  unconquered  Britons 
had  sunk  into  a  mass  of  savage  herdsmen,  clad  in  the 
skins  and  fed  by  the  milk  of  the  cattle  they  tended. 
Faithless,  greedy,  and  revengeful,  retaining  no  higher 
political  organization  than  that  of  the  clan,  their  strength 
was  broken  by  ruthless  feuds,  and  they  were  united  only 
in  battle  or  in  raid  against  the  stranger.  But  in  the 
heart  of  the  wild  people  there  still  lingered  a  spark  of 
the  poetic  fire  which  had  nerved  it  four  hundred  years 
before  through  Aneurin  and  Llywarch  Hen  to  its  strug- 
gle with  the  earliest  Englishmen.  At  the  hour  of  its 
lowest  degradation  the  silence  of  Wales  was  suddenly 
broken  by  a  crowd  of  singers.  The  song  of  the  twelfth 
century  burst  forth,  not  from  one  bard  or  another,  but 
from  the  nation  at  large.  The  Welsh  temper  indeed  was 
steeped  in  poetry.  "  In  every  house,"  says  the  shrewd 
Gerald  du  Barri,  "  strangers  who  arrived  in  the  morning 
were  entertained  till  eventide  with  the  talk  of  maidens 
and  the  music  of  the  harp."  A  romantic  literature, 
which  was  destined  to  leaven  the  fancy  of  western  Eu- 
rope, had  grown  up  among  this  wild  people  and  found  an 
admirable  means  of  utterance  in  its  tongue.  The  Welsh 
language  was  as  real  a  development  of  the  old  Celtic 
language  heard  by  Caesar  as  the  Romance  tongues  are 
developments  of  Caesar's  Latin,  but  at  a  far  earlier  date 
than  any  other  language  of  modern  Europe  it  had  attained 
to  definite  structure  and  to  settled  literary  form.  No 
other  mediaeval  literature  shows  at  its  outset  the  same 
elaborate  and  completed  organization  as  that  of  the 
Welsh.  But  within  these  settled  forms  the  Celtic  fancy 
played  with  a  startling  freedom.  In  one  of  the  later 
poems  Gwion  the  Little  transforms  himself  into  a  hare, 
a  fish,  a  bird,  a  grain  of  wheat  ;  but  he  is  only  the  sym- 
bol of  the  strange  shapes  in  which  the  Celtic  fancy  em- 
bodies itself  in  the  romantic  tales  which  reached  their 
highest  perfection  in  the  legends  of  Arthur. 


270  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  gay  extravagance  of  these  "Mabinogion"  flings 
defiance  to  all  fact,  tradition,  probability,  and  revels  in 
the  impossible  and  unreal.  When  Arthur  sails  into  the 
unknown  world  it  is  in  a  ship  of  glass.  The  "descent 
into  hell,"  as  a  Celtic  poet  paints  it  shakes  off  the  medise  val 
horror  with  the  mediaeval  reverence,  and  the  knight  who 
achieves  the  quest  spends  his  years  of  infernal  durance 
in  hunting  and  minstrelsy,  and  in  converse  with  fair 
women.  The  world  of  the  Mabinogion  is  a  world  of 
pure  phantasy,  a  new  earth  of  marvels  and  enchant- 
ments, of  dark  forests  whose  silence  is  broken  by  the 
hermit's  bell  and  sunny  glades  where  the  light  plays  on 
the  hero's  armor.  Each  figure  as  it  moves  across  the 
poet's  canvas  is  bright  with  glancing  color.  "  The 
maiden  was  clothed  in  a  robe  of  flame-colored  silk,  and 
about  her  neck  was  a  collar  of  ruddy  gold  in  which  were 
precious  emeralds  and  rubies.  Her  head  was  of  brighter 
gold  than  the  flower  of  the  broom,  her  skin  was  whiter 
than  the  foam  of  the  wave.  And  fairer  were  her  hands 
and  her  fingers  than  the  blossoms  of  the  wood-anemone 
amidst  the  spray  of  the  meadow  fountain.  The  eye  of 
the  trained  hawk,  the  glance  of  the  falcon,  was  not 
brighter  than  hers.  Her  bosom  was  more  snowy  than 
the  breast  of  the  white  swan,  her  cheek  was  redder  than 
the  reddest  roses."  Everywhere  there  is  an  Oriental  pro- 
fusion of  gorgeous  imagery,  but  the  gorgeousness  is  sel- 
dom oppressive.  The  sensibility  of  the  Celtic  temper, 
so  quick  to  perceive  beauty,  so  eager  in  its  thirst  for  life, 
its  emotions,  its  adventures,  its  sorrows,  its  joys,  is 
tempered  by  a  passionate  melancholy  that  expresses  its 
revolt  against  the  impossible,  by  an  instinct  of  what  is 
noble,  by  a  sentiment  that  discovers  the  weird  charm  of 
nature.  The  wildest  extravagance  of  the  tale-teller  is 
relieved  by  rome  graceful  play  of  pure  fancy,  some  tender 
note  of  feeling,  some  magical  touch  of  beauty.  As  Kal  weh's 
greyhounds  bound  from  side  to  side  of  their  master's 
steed,  they  "  sport  round  him  like  two  sea-swallows." 
His  spear  is  "  swifter  than  the  fall  of  the  dewdrop  from 
the  blade  of  reed-grass  upon  the  earth  when  the  dew  of 
June  is  at  the  heaviest."  A  subtle,  observant  love  of 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  271 

nature  and  natural  beauty  takes  fresh  color  from  the 
passionate  human  sentiment  with  which  it  is  imbued. 
"  I  love  the  birds,"  sings  Gwalchmai,  "  and  their  sweet 
voices  in  the  lulling  songs  of  the  wood ;  "  he  watches  at 
night  beside  the  fords  "  among  the  untrodden  grass  "  to 
hear  the  nightingale  and  watch  the  play  of  the  sea-mew. 
Even  patriotism  takes  the  same  picturesque  form.  The 
Welsh  poet  hates  the  flat  and  sluggish  land  of  the  Sax- 
on ;  as  he  dwells  on  his  own  he  tells  of  "its  sea-coast 
and  its  mountains,  its  towns  on  the  forest  border,  its 
fair  landscape,  its  dales,  its  waters,  and  its  valleys,  its 
white  sea-mews,  its  beauteous  women."  Here  as  every- 
where the  sentiment  of  nature  passes  swiftly  and  subtly 
into  the  sentiment  of  a  human  tenderness  :  "  I  love  its 
fields  clothed  with  tender  trefoil  "  goes  on  the  song ;  "  I 
love  the  marches  of  Merioneth  where  my  head  was  pil- 
lowed on  a  snow-white  arm."  In  the  Celtic  love  of 
woman  there  is  little  of  the  Teutonic  depth  and  earnest- 
ness, but  in  its  stead  a  childlike  spirit  of  delicate  enjoy- 
ment, a  faint  distant  flush  of  passion  like  the  roselight 
of  dawn  on  a  snowy  mountain  peak,  a  playful  delight  in 
beauty.  "  White  is  my  love  as  the  apple  blossom,  as  the 
ocean's  spray ;  her  face  shines  like  the  pearly  dew  on 
Eryri ;  the  glow  of  her  cheeks  is  like  the  light  of  sun- 
set." The  buoyant  and  elastic  temper  of  the  French 
trouveur  was  spiritualized  in  the  Welsh  singers  by  a 
more  refined  poetic  feeling.  "  Whoso  beheld  her  was 
filled  with  her  love.  Four  white  trefoils  sprang  up 
wherever  she  trod."  A  touch  of  pure  fancy  such  as  this 
removes  its  object  out  of  the  sphere  of  passion  into  one 
of  delight  and  reverence. 

It  is  strange  to  pass  from  the  world  of  actual  Welsh 
history  into  such  a  world  as  this.  But  side  by  side  with 
this  wayward,  fanciful  stream  of  poesy  and  romance  ran 
a  torrent  of  intenser  song.  The  spirit  of  the  earlier 
bards,  their  joy  in  battle,  their  love  of  freedom,  broke 
out  anew  in  ode  after  ode,  in  songs  extravagant,  monot- 
onous, often  prosaic,  but  fused  into  poetry  by  the  in- 
tense fire  of  patriotism  which  glowed  within  them. 
Every  fight,  every  hero  had  its  verse.  The  names  of 


272  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

older  singers,  of  Taliesin,  Aneurin,  and  Llywarch  Hen, 
were  revived  in  bold  forgeries  to  animate  the  national 
resistance  and  to  prophesy  victory.  It  was  in  North 
Wales  that  the  spirit  of  patriotism  received  its  strongest 
inspiration  from  this  burst  of  song.  Again  and  again 
Henry  the  Second  was  driven  to  retreat  from  the  im- 
pregnable fastnesses  where  the  "  Lords  of  Snowdon,"  the 
princes  of  the  house  of  Gruffydd  ap  Conan,  claimed  su- 
premacy over  the  whole  of  Wales.  Once  in  the  pass  of 
Consilt  a  cry  arose  that  the  King  was  slain,  Henry  of 
Essex  flung  down  the  royal  standard,  and  the  King's 
desperate  efforts  could  hardly  save  his  army  from  utter 
rout.  The  bitter  satire  of  the  Welsh  singers  bade  him 
knight  his  horse,  since  its  speed  had  alone  saved  him 
from  capture.  In  a  later  campaign  the  invaders  were 
met  by  storms  of  rain,  and  forced  to  abandon  their  bag- 
gage in  a  headlong  flight  to  Chester.  The  greatest  of 
the  Welsh  odes,  that  known  to  English  readers  in  Gray's 
translation  as  "  The  Triumph  of  Owen,"  is  Gwalchmai's 
song  of  victory  over  the  repulse  of  an  English  fleet  from 
Abermenai. 

The  long  reign  of  Llewelyn  the  son  of  Jorwerth  seemed 
destined  to  realize  the  hopes  of  his  countrymen.  The 
homage  which  he  succeeded  in  extorting  from  the  whole 
of  the  Welsh  chieftains  during  a  reign  which  lasted  from 
1194  to  1240  placed  him  openly  at  the  head  of  his  race, 
and  gave  a  new  character  to  its  struggle  with  the  English 
King.  In  consolidating  his  authority  within  his  own  do- 
mains, and  in  the  assertion  of  his  lordship  over  the  princes 
of  the  south,  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwertii  aimed  steadily  at 
securing  the  means  of  striking  off  the  yoke  of  the  Saxon. 
It  was  in  vain  that  John  strove  to  buy  his  friendship  by 
the  hand  of  his  natural  daughter  Johanna.  Fresh  raids 
on  the  Marches  forced  the  King  to  enter  Wales  in  1211 ; 
but  though  his  army  reached  Snowdon  it  fell  back  like 
its  predecessors,  starved  and  broken  before  an  enemy  it 
could  never  reach.  A  second  attack  in  the  same  year 
had  better  success.  The  chieftains  of  South  Wales  were 
drawn  from  their  new  allegiance  to  join  the  English 
forces,  and  Llewelyn,  prisoned  in  his  fastnesses,  was  at 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  273 

last  driven  to  submit.  But  the  ink  of  the  treaty  was 
hardly  dry  before  Wales  was  again  on  fire ;  a  common 
fear  of  the  English  once  more  united  its  chieftains,  and 
the  war  between  John  and  his  barons  soon  removed  all 
dread  of  a  new  invasion.  Absolved  from  his  allegiance 
to  an  excommunicated  King,  and  allied  with  the  barons 
under  Fitz  waiter — too  glad  to  enlist  in  their  cause  a 
prince  who  could  hold  in  check  the  nobles  of  the  border 
country  where  the  royalist  cause  was  strongest — Llewelyn 
seized  bis  opportunity  to  reduce  Shrewsbury,  to  annex 
Powys,  the  central  district  of  Wales  where  the  English 
influence  had  always  been  powerful,  to  clear  the  royal 
garrisons  from  Caermarthen  and  Cardigan,  and  to  force 
even  the  Flemings  of  Pembroke  to  do  him  homage. 

England  watched  these  efforts  of  the  subject  race  with 
an  anger  still  mingled  with  contempt.  '•  Who  knows 
not,"  exclaims  Matthew  Paris  as  he  dwells  on  the  new 
pretensions  of  the  Welsh  ruler,  "  who  knows  not  that  the 
Prince  of  Wales  is  a  petty  vassal  of  the  King  of  England  ?  " 
But  the  temper  of  Llewelyn's  own  people  was  far  other 
than  the  temper  of  the  English  chronicler.  The  hopes  of 
Wales  rose  higher  and  higher  with  each  triumph  of  the 
Lord  of  Snowdon.  His  court  was  crowded  with  bardic 
singers.  "  He  pours,"  sings  one  of  them,  "  his  gold  into 
the  lap  of  the  bard  as  the  ripe  fruit  falls  from  the  trees." 
Gold  however  was  hardly  needed  to  wake  their  enthusi- 
asm. Poet  after  poet  sang  of  "  the  Devastator  of  Eng- 
land," the  "  Eagle  of  men  that  loves  not  to  lie  nor  sleep," 
"  towering  above  the  rest  of  men  with  his  long  red  lance," 
his  "red  helmet  of  battle  crested  with  a  fierce  wolf." 
"  The  sound  of  his  coming  is  like  the  roar  of  the  wave  as 
it  rushes  to  the  shore  that  can  neither  be  stayed  nor 
hushed."  Lesser  bards  strung  together  Llewelyn's  victo- 
ries in  rough  jingle  of  rime  and  hounded  him  on  to  the 
slaughter.  "  Be  of  good  courage  in  the  slaughter,"  sings 
Elidir,  "  cling  to  thy  work,  destroy  England,  and  plunder 
its  multitudes."  A  fierce  thirst  for  blood  runs  through 
the  abrupt,  passionate  verses  of  the  court  singers. 
"  Swanse^a,  that  tranquil  town,  was  broken  in  heaps," 
bursts  out  a  triumphant  bard ;  "  St.  Clears,  with  its  bright 

18 


274  HISTOKY  OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

white  lands,  it  is  not  Saxons  who  hold  it  now  !  "  "  In 
Swansea,  the  key  of  Lloegria,  we  made  widows  of  all 
the  wives."  u  The  dread  Eagle  is  wont  to  lay  corpses 
iu  rows,  and  to  feast  with  the  leader  of  wolves  and  with 
hovering  ravens  glutted  with  flesh,  butchers  with  keen 
scent  of  carcases."  k'  Better,"  closes  the  song,  "  better 
the  grave  than  the  life  of  man  who  sighs  when  the  honrs 
call  him  forth  to  the  squares  of  battle." 

But  even  in  bardic  verse  Llewelyn  rises  high  out  of 
the  mere  mob  of  chieftains  who  live  by  rapine,  and  boast 
as  the  Hirlas-horn  passes  from  hand  to  hand  through  the 
hall  that  "  they  take  and  give  no  quarter."  "  Tender- 
hearted, wise,  witty,  ingenious,"  he  was  "  the  great 
Caesar  "  who  was  to  gather  beneath  his  sway  the  broken 
fragments  of  the  Celtic  race.  Mysterious  prophecies, 
the  prophecies  of  Merlin  the  Wise  which  floated  from 
lip  to  lip  and  were  heard  even  along  the  Seine  and  the 
Rhine,  came  home  again  to  nerve  Wales  to  its  last  strug- 
gle with  the  stranger.  Medrawd  and  Arthur,  men 
whispered,  would  appear  once  more  on  earth  to  fight 
over  again  the  fatal  battle  of  Camlan  in  which  the  hero- 
king  perished.  The  last  conqueror  of  the  Celtic  race, 
Cadwallon,  still  lived  to  combat  for  his  people.  The 
supposed  verses  of  Taliesin  expressed  the  undying  hope 
of  a  restoration  of  the  Cymry.  "  In  their  hands  shall  be 
all  the  land  from  Britanny  to  Man :  .  .  .  a  rumor  shall 
arise  that  the  Germans  are  moving  out  of  Britain  back 
again  to  their  fatherland."  Gathered  up  in  the  strange 
work  of  Geoffry  of  Monmouth,  these  predictions  had 
long  been  making  a  deep  impression  not  on  Wales  only 
but  on  its  conquerors.  It  was  to  meet  the  dreams  of  a 
yet  living  Arthur  that  the  grave  of  the  legendary  hero- 
king  at  Glastonbury  was  found  and  visited  by  Henry  the 
Second.  But  neither  trick  nor  conquest  could  shake  the 
firm  faith  of  the  Celt  in  the  ultimate  victory  of  his  race. 
k%  Think  you,"  said  Henry  to  a  Welsh  chieftain  who 
joined  his  host,  "  that  your  people  of  rebels  can  with- 
stand my  army?"  "My  people,"  replied  the  chieftain, 
"  may  be  weakened  by  your  might,  and  even  in  great 
part  destroyed,  but  unless  the  wrath  of  God  t>e  on  the 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  275 

side  of  its  foe  it  will  not  perish  utterly.  Nor  deem  I 
that  other  race  or  other  tongue  will  answer  for  this 
corner  of  the  world  before  the  Judge  of  all  at  the  last 
day  save  this  people  and  tongue  of  Wales."  So  ran  the 
popular  rime,  "  The  Lord  they  will  praise,  their  speech 
they  shall  keep,  their  land  they  shall  lose — except  wild 
Wales." 

Faith  and  prophecy  seemed  justified  by  the  growing 
strength  of  the  British  people.  The  weakness  and  dis- 
sensions which  characterized  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Third  enabled  Llewelyn  ap  Jorwerth  to  preserve  a  prac- 
tical independence  till  the  close  of  his  life,  when  a  fresh 
acknowledgment  of  the  English  supremacy  was  wrested 
from  him  by  Archbishop  Edmund.  But  the  triumphs  of 
his  arms  were  renewed  by  Llewelyn  the  son  of  Gryffydd, 
who  followed  him  in  1246.  The  raids  of  the  new  chief- 
tain swept  the  border  to  the  very  gates  of  Chester, 
while  his  conquest  of  Glamorgan  seemed  to  bind  the 
whole  people  together  in  a  power  strong  enough  to  meet 
any  attack  from  the  stranger.  So  pressing  was  the 
danger  that  it  called  the  King's  eldest  son,  Edward,  to 
the  field ;  but  his  first  appearance  in  arms  ended  in  a 
crushing  defeat.  The  defeat  however  remained  un- 
avenged. Henry's  dreams  were  of  mightier  enterprizes 
than  the  reduction  of  the  Welsh.  The  Popes  were  still 
fighting  their  weary  battle  against  the  House  of  Hohen- 
staufen,  and  were  offering  its  kingdom  of  Sicily,  which 
they  regarded  as  a  forfeited  fief  of  the  Holy  See,  to  any 
power  that  would  aid  them  in  the  struggle.  In  1254  it 
was  offered  to  the  King's  second  son,  Edmund.  With 
imbecile  pride  Henry  accepted  the  offer,  prepared  to 
send  an  army  across  the  Alps,  and  pledged  England  to 
repay  the  sums  which  the  Pope  was  borrowing  for  the 
purposes  of  his  war.  In  a  parliament  at  the  opening  of 
1257  he  demanded  an  aid  and  a  tenth  from  the  clergy. 
A  fresh  demand  was  made  in  1258.  But  the  patience  of 
the  realm  was  at  last  exhausted.  Earl  Simon  had  re- 
turned in  1253  from  his  government  of  Gascony,  and  the 
fruit  of  his  meditations  during  the  four  years  of  his  quiet 
stay  at  home,  a  quiet  broken  only  by  short  embassies  to 


276  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

France  and  Scotland  which  showed  there  was  as  yet  no 
open  quarrel  with  Henry,  was  seen  in  a  league  of  the 
baronage  and  in  their  adoption  of  a  new  and  startling 
policy.  The  past  half  century  had  shown  both  the 
strength  and  weakness  of  the  Charter :  its  strength  as  a 
rallying-point  for  the  baronage  and  a  definite  assertion 
of  rights  which  the  King  could  be  made  to  acknowledge  ; 
its  weakness  in  providing  no  means  for  the  enforcement 
of  its  own  stipulations.  Henry  had  sworn  again  and 
again  to  observe  the  Charter,  and  his  oath  was  no  sooner 
taken  than  it  was  unscrupulously  broken.  The  barons 
had  secured  the  freedom  of  the  realm ;  the  secret  of  their 
long  patience  during  the  reign  of  Henry  lay  in  the  diffi- 
culty of  securing  its  right  administration.  It  was  this 
difficulty  which  Earl  Simon  was  prepared  to  solve  when 
action  was  forced  on  him  by  the  stir  of  the  realm.  A 
great  famine  added  to  the  sense  of  danger  from  Wales 
and  from  Scotland  and  to  the  irritation  at  the  new  de- 
mands from  both  Henry  and  Rome  with  which  the  year 
1258  opened.  It  was  to  arrange  for  a  campaign  against 
Wales  that  Henry  called  a  parliament  in  April.  But 
the  baronage  appeared  in  arms  with  Gloucester  and  Lei- 
cester at  their  head.  The  King  was  forced  to  consent  to 
the  appointment  of  a  committee  of  twenty-four  to  draw 
up  terms  for  the  reform  of  the  state.  The  twenty-four 
again  met  the  Parliament  at  Oxford  in  June,  and  al- 
though half  the  committee  consisted  of  royal  ministers 
and  favorites  it  was  impossible  to  resist  the  tide  of  pop- 
ular feeling.  Hugh  Bigod,  one  of  the  firmest  adherents 
of  the  two  Earls,  was  chosen  as  Justiciar.  The  claim  to 
elect  this  great  officer  was  in  fact  the  leading  point  in 
the  baronial  policy.  But  further  measures  were  needed 
to  hold  in  check  such  arbitrary  misgovern  me  nt  as  had 
prevailed  during  the  past  twenty  years.  By  the  "  Pro- 
visions of  Oxford  "  it  was  agreed  that  the  Great  Council 
should  assemble  thrice  in  the  year,  whether  summoned 
by  the  King  or  no ;  and  on  each  occasion  "  the  Com- 
monalty shall  elect  twelve  honest  men  who  shall" come 
to  the  Parliaments,  and  at  other  times  when  occasion  shall 
be  when  the  King  and  his  Council  shall  send  for  them, 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  277 

to  treat  of  the  wants  of  the  King  and  of  his  kingdom. 
And  the  Commonalty  shall  hold  as  established  that  which 
these  Twelve  shall  do."  Three  permanent  committees 
of  barons  and  prelates  were  named  to  carry  out  the  work 
of  reform  and  administration.  The  reform  of  the  Church 
was  left  to  the  original  Twenty-Four ;  a  second  Twenty- 
Four  negotiated  the  financial  aids  ;  a  Permanent  Coun- 
cil of  Fifteen  advised  the  King  in  the  ordinary  work  of 
Government.  The  complexity  of  such  an  arrangement 
was  relieved  by  the  fact  that  the  members  of  each  of 
these  committees  were  in  great  part  the  same  persons. 
The  Justiciar,  Chancellor,  and  the  guardians  of  the 
King's  castles'  swore  to  act  only  with  the  advice  and 
assent  of  the  Permanent  Council,  and  the  first  two  great 
officers,  with  the  Treasurer,  were  to  give  account  of  their 
proceedings  to  it  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Sheriffs  were 
to  be  appointed  for  a  single  year  only,  no  doubt  by  the 
Council,  from  among  the  chief  tenants  of  the  county, 
and  no  undue  fees  were  to  be  exacted  for  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  in  their  court. 

A  royal  proclamation  in  the  English  tongue,  the  first 
in  that  tongue  since  the  Conquest  which  has  reached  us, 
ordered  the  observance  of  these  Provisions.  The  King 
was  in  fact  helpless,  and  resistance  came  only  from  the 
foreign  favorites,  who  refused  to  surrender  the  castles 
and  honors  which  had  been  granted  to  them.  But  the 
Twenty-four  were  resolute  in  their  action  ;  and  an  armed 
demonstration  of  the  barons  drove  the  foreigners  in  flight 
over  sea.  1  he  whole  royal  power  was  now  in  fact  in  the 
hands  of  the  committees  appointed  b}-  the  Great  Council. 
But  the  measures  of  the  barons  showed  little  of  the  wis- 
dom and  energy  which  the  country  had  hoped  for.  In 
October,  1259,  the  knighthood  complained  that  the  barons 
had  done  nothing  but  seek  their  own  advantage  in  the 
recent  changes.  This  protest  produced  the  Provisions 
of  Westminster,  which  gave  protection  to  tenants  against 
their  feudal  lords,  regulated  legal  procedure  in  the 
feudal  courts,  appointed  four  knights  in  each  shire  to 
watch  the  justice  of  the  sheriffs,  and  made  other  tempo- 
rary enactments  for  the  furtherance  of  justice.  But 


278  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

these  Provisions  brought  little  fruit,  and  a  tendency  to 
mere  feudal  privilege  showed  itself  in  an  exemption  of 
all  nobles  and  prelates  from  attendance  at  the  Sheriff's 
courts.  Their  foreign  policy  was  more  vigorous  and 
successful.  All  further  payment  to  Rome,  whether 
secular  or  ecclesiastical,  was  prohibited;  formal  notice 
was  given  to  the  Pope  of  England's  withdrawal  from  the 
Sicilian  enterprise,  peace  put  an  end  to  the  incursions  of 
the  Welsh,  and  negotiations  on  the  footing  of  a  formal 
abandonment  of  the  King's  claim  to  Normandy,  Anjou, 
Maine,  Touraine,  and  Poitou  ended  in  October,  1259,  in 
a  peace  with  France. 

This  peace,  the  triumph  of  that  English  policy  which 
had  been  struggling  ever  since  the  days  of  Hubert  de 
Burgh  with  the  Continental  policy  of  Henry  and  his 
foreign  advisers,  was  the  work  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester. 
The  revolution  had  doubtless  been  mainly  Simonls  doing. 
In  the  summer  of  1258,  while  the  great  change  was  going 
on,  a  thunder  storm  drove  the  King  as  he  passed  along 
the  river  to  the  house  of  the  Bishop  of  Durham  where 
the  Earl  was  then  sojourning.  Simon  bade  Henry  take 
shelter  with  him  and  have  no  fear  of  the  storm.  The 
King  refused  with  petulant  wit.  "  If  I  fear  the  thunder, 
I  fear  you,  Sir  Earl,  more  than  all  the  thunder  in  the 
world."  But  Simon  had  probably  small  faith  in  the 
cumbrous  system  of  government  which  the  Barons  de- 
vised, and  it  was  with  reluctance  that  he  was  brought 
to  swear  to  the  Provisions  of  Oxford  which  embodied  it. 
With  their  home  government  he  had  little  to  do,  for 
from  the  autumn  of  1258  to  that  of  1259  he  was  chiefly 
busied  in  negotiation  in  France.  But  already  his  breach 
with  Gloucester  and  the  bulk  of  his  fellow  councillors 
was  marked.  In  the  Lent  Parliament  of  1259  he  had  re- 
proached them,  and  Gloucester  above  all,  with  faithless- 
ness to  their  trust.  "  The  things  we  are  treating  of,"  he 
cried,  "  we  have  sworn  to  carry  out.  With  such  feeble 
and  faithless  men  I  care  not  to  have  aught  to  do ! "  The 
peace  with  France  was  hardly  signed  when  his  distrust 
of  his  colleagues  was  verified.  Henry's  withdrawal  to  the 
French  court  at  the  close  of  the  year  for  the  formal  sig- 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  279 

nature  of  the  treaty  was  the  signal  for  a  reactionary 
movement.  From  France  the  King  forbade  the  summon- 
ing of  a  Lent  Parliament  in  1260  and  announced  his  re- 
sumption of  the  enterprise  against  Sicily.  Both  acts 
were  distinct  breaches  of  the  Provisions  of  Oxford,  but 
Henry  trusted  to  the  divisions  of  the  Twenty-Four. 
Gloucester  was  in  open  feud  with  Leicester;  the  Jus- 
ticiar,  Hugh  Bigod,  resigned  his  office  in  the  spring ;  and 
both  of  these  leaders  drew  cautiously  to  the  King. 
Roger  Mortimer  and  the  Earls  of  Hereford  and  Norfolk 
more  openly  espoused  the  royal  cause,  and  in  February, 
1260,  Henry  had  gained  confidence  enough  to  announce 
that  as  the  barons  had  failed  to  keep  their  part  of  the 
Provisions  he  should  not  keep  his. 

Earl  Simon  almost  alone  remained  unshaken.  But  his 
growing  influence  was  seen  in  the  appointment  of  his 
supporter,  Hugh  Despenser,  as  Justiciar  in  Bigod's  place, 
while  his  strength  was  doubled  by  the  accession  of  the 
King's  son  Edward  to  his  side.  In  the  moment  of  the 
revolution  Edward  had  vehemently  supported  the  party 
of  the  foreigners.  But  he  had  sworn  to  observe  the  Pro- 
visions, and  the  fidelity  to  his  pledge  which  remained 
throughout  his  life  the  chief  note  of  his  temper  at  once 
showed  itself.  Like  Simon  he  protested  against  the 
faithlessness  of  the  barons  in  the  carrying  out  of  their 
reforms,  and  it  was  his  strenuous  support  of  the  petition 
of  the  knighthood  that  brought  about  the  additional 
Provisions  of  1259.  He  had  been  brought  up  with  Earl 
Simon's  sons,  and  with  the  Earl  himself  his  relations  re- 
mained friendly  even  at  the  later  time  of  their  fatal 
hostilities.  But  as  yet  he  seems  to  have  .had  no  distrust 
of  Simon's  purposes  or  policy.  His  adhesion  to  the  Earl 
recalled  Henry  from  France  ;  and  the  King  was  at  once 
joined  by  Gloucester  in  London  while  Edward  and 
Simon  remained  without  the  walls.  But  the  love  of 
father  and  son  proved  too  strong  to  bear  political  sever- 
ance, and  Edward's  reconciliation  foiled  the  Earl's  plans. 
He  withdrew  to  the  Welsh  border,  where  fresh  troubles 
were  breaking  out,  while  Henry  prepared  to  deal  his 
final  blow  at  the  government  which,  tottering  as  it  was, 


280  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

still  held  him  in  check.  Rome  had  resented  the  measures 
which  had  put  an  end  to  her  extortions,  and  it  was  to 
Rome  that  Henry  looked  for  a  formal  absolution  from 
his  oath  to  observe  the  Provisions.  In  June,  1261,  he 
produced  a  Bull  annulling  the  Provisions  and  freeing 
him  from  his  oath  in  a  Parliament  at  Winchester.  The 
suddenness  of  the  blow  forbade  open  protest  and  Henry 
quickly  followed  up  his  victory.  Hugh  Bigod,  who  had 
surrendered  the  Tower  and  Dover  in  the  spring,  sur- 
rendered the  other  castles  he  held  in  the  autumn.  Hugh 
Despenser  was  deposed  from  the  Justiciarship  and  a  roy- 
alist, Philip  Basset,  appointed  in  his  place. 

The  news  of  this  counter-revolution  reunited  for  a 
moment  the  barons.  Gloucester  joined  Earl  Simon  in 
calling  an  autumn  Parliament  at  St.  Alban's,  and  in 
summoning  to  it  three  knights  from  every  shire  south  of 
Trent.  But  the  union  was  a  brief  one.  Gloucester  con- 
sented to  refer  the  quarrel  with  the  King  to  arbitration 
and  the  Earl  of  Leicester  withdrew  in  August  to  France. 
He  saw  that  for  the  while  there  was  no  means  of  with- 
standing Henry,  even  in  his  open  defiance  of  the  Provi- 
sions. Foreign  soldiers  were  brought  into  the  land ;  the 
King  won  back  again  the  appointment  of  sheriffs.  For 
eighteen  months  of  this  new  rule  Simon  could  do  noth- 
ing but  wait.  But  his  long  absence  lulled  the  old  jeal- 
ousies against  him.  The  confusion  of  the  realm  and  a 
fresh  outbreak  of  troubles  in  Wales  renewed  the  disgust 
at  Henry's  government,  while  his  unswerving  faithful- 
ness to  the  Provisions  fixed  the  eyes  of  all  Englishmen 
"upon  the  Earl  as  their  natural  leader.  The  death  of 
Gloucester  in  the  summer  of  1262  removed  the  one  bar- 
rier to  action ;  and  in  the  spring  of  1263  Simon  landed 
again  in  England  as  the  unquestioned  head  of  the  baro- 
nial party.  What  immediate!}'  forced  him  to  action  was 
a  march  of  Edward  with  a  bod}r  of  foreign  troops  against 
Llewelyn,  who  was  probably  by  this  time  in  communica- 
tion if  not  in  actual  alliance  with  the  Earl.  The  chief 
opponents  of  Llewelyn  among  the  Marcher  Lords  were 
ardent  supporters  of  Henry's  misgovern ment,  and  when 
a  common  hostility  drew  the  Prince  and  Earl  together, 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  281 

the  constitutional  position  of  Llewelyn  as  an  English 
noble  gave  formal  justification  for  co-operation  with 
him.  At  Whitsuntide  the  barons  met  Simon  at  Oxford 
and  finally  summoned  Henry  to  observe  the  Provisions. 
His  refusal  was  met  by  an  appeal  to  arms.  Throughout 
the  country  the  younger  nobles  flocked  to  Simon's  stand- 
ard, and  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester,  Gilbert  of  Clare, 
became  his  warmest  supporter.  His  rapid  movements 
foiled  all  opposition.  While  Henry  vainly  strove  to 
raise  money  and  men,  Simon  swept  the  Welsh  border, 
marched  through  Reading  on  Dover,  and  finally  ap- 
peared before  London. 

The  Earl's  triumph  was  complete.  Edward  after  a 
brief  attempt  at  resistance  was  forced  to  surrender 
Windsor  and  disband  his  foreign  troops.  The  rising  of 
London  in  the  cause  of  the  barons  left  Henry  helpless. 
But  at  the  moment  of  triumph  the  Earl  saw  himself 
anew  forsaken.  The  bulk  of  the  nobles  again  drew  to- 
wards the  King;  only  six  of  the  twelve  barons  who  had 
formed  the  patriot  half  of  the  committee  of  1258,  only 
four  of  the  twelve  representatives  of  the  community  at 
that  date,  were  now  with  the  Earl.  The  dread  too  of 
civil  war  gave  strength  to  the  cry  for  a  compromise,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  year  it  was  agreed  that  the  strife 
should  be  left  to  the  arbitration  of  the  French  King, 
Lewis  the  Ninth.  But  saint  and  just  ruler  as  he  was, 
the  royal  power  was  in  the  conception  of  Lewis  a  divine 
thing,  which  no  human  power  could  limit  or  fetter,  and 
his  decision,  which  was  given  in  January,  1264,  annulled 
the  whole  of  the  Provisions.  Only  the  Charters  granted 
before  the  Provisions  were  to  be  observed.  The  ap- 
pointment and  removal  of  all  officers  of  state  was  to  be 
wholly  with  the  King,  and  he  was  suffered  to  call  aliens 
to  his  councils  if  he  would.  The  Mise  of  Amiens  was 
at  once  confirmed  by  the  Pope,  and  crushing  blow  as  it 
was,  the  barons  felt  themselves  bound  by  the  award.  It 
was  only  the  exclusion  of  aliens — a  point  which  they 
had  not  purposed  to  submit  to  arbitration — which  they 
refused  to  concede.  Luckily  Henry  was  as  inflexible  on 
this  point  as  on  the  rest,  and  the  mutual  distrust  pre- 
vented any  real  accommodation. 


282  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

But  Henry  had  to  reckon  on  more  than  the  baronage. 
Deserted  as  he  was  by  the  greater  nobles,  Simon  was  far 
from  standing  alone.  Throughout  the  recent  struggle 
the  new  city  governments  of  the  craft-gilds,  which  were 
known  by  the  name  of  "  Communes,"  had  shown  an  en- 
thusiastic devotion  to  his  cause.  The  Queen  was  stopped 
in  her  attempt  to  escape  from  the  Tower  by  an  angry 
mob,  who  drove  her  back  with  stones  and  foul  words. 
When  Henry  attempted  to  surprise  Leicester  in  his  quar- 
ters at  Southwark,  the  Londoners  burst  the  gates  which 
had  been  locked  by  the  richer  burghers  against  him,  and 
rescued  him  by  a  welcome  into  the  city.  The  clergy  and 
the  universities  went  in  sympathy  with  the  towns,  and 
in  spite  of  the  taunts  of  the  royalists,  who  accused  him 
of  seeking  allies  against  the  nobility  in  the  common  peo- 
ple, the  popular  enthusiasm  gave  a  strength  to  the  Earl 
which  sustained  him  even  in  this  darkest  hour  of  the 
struggle.  He  at  once  resolved  on  resistance.  The  French 
award  had  luckily  reserved  the  rights  of  Englishmen  to 
the  liberties  they  had  enjoyed  before  the  Provisions  of 
Oxford,  and  it  was  easy  for  Simon  to  prove  that  the  ar- 
bitrary power  it  gave  to  the  Crown  was  as  contrary  to 
the  Charter  as  to  the  Provisions  themselves.  London  was 
the  first  to  reject  the  decision  ;  in  March  1264  its  citi- 
zens mustered  at  the  call  of  the  town-bell  at  Saint  Paul's, 
seized  the  royal  officials,  and  plundered  the  royal  parks. 
But  an  army  had  already  mustered  in  great  force  at  the 
King's  summons,  while  Leicester  found  himself  deserted 
by  the  bulk  of  the  baronage.  Every  day  brought  news 
of  ill.  A  detachment  from  Scotland  joined  Henry's  forces. 
The  younger  De  Montfort  was  taken  prisoner.  North- 
ampton was  captured,  the  King  raised  the  siege  of 
Rochester,  and  a  rapid  march  of  Earl  Simon's  only  saved 
London  itself  from  a  surprise  by  Edward.  But  betrayed 
as  he  was,  the  Earl  remained  firm  to  the  cause.  He 
would  fight  to  the  end,  he  said,  even  were  he  and  his 
sons  left  to  fight  alone.  With  an  army  reinforced  by 
15,000  Londoners,  he  marched  in  May  to  the  relief  of 
the  Cinque  Ports  which  were  now  threatened  by  the 
King.  Even  on  the  march  he  was  forsaken  by  many  of 


THE    CHARTER.      1204—1291.  285 

the  nobles  who  followed  him.  Halting  at  Fl etching  in 
Sussex,  a  few  miles  from  Lewes,  where  the  royal  army 
was  encamped,  Earl  Simon  with  the  young  Earl  of  Glou- 
cester offered  the  King  compensation  for  all  damage  if 
he  would  observe  the  Provisions.  Henry's  answer  was 
one  of  defiance,  and  though  numbers  were  against  him,  the 
Earl  resolved  on  battle.  His  skill  as  a  soldier  reversed 
the  advantages  of  the  ground  ;  marching  at  dawn  on  the 
14th  of  May  he  seized  the  heights  eastward  of  the  town 
and  moved  down  these  slopes  to  an  attack.  His  men 
with  white  crosses  on  back  and  breast  knelt  in  prayer 
before  the  battle  opened,  and  all  but  reached  the  town 
before  their  approach  was  perceived.  Edward  however 
opened  the  fight  by  a  furious  charge  which  broke  the 
Londoners  on  Leicester's  left.  In  the  bitterness  of  his 
hatred  for  the  insult  to  his  mother  he  pursued  them  for 
four  miles,  slaughtering  three  thousand  men.  But  he  re- 
turned to  find  the  battle  lost.  Crowded  in  the  narrow 
space  between  the  heights  and  the  river  Ouse,  a  space 
broken  by  marshes  and  by  the  long  street  of  the  town, 
the  royalist  centre  and  left  were  crushed  by  Earl  Simon. 
The  Earl  of  Cornwall,  now  King  of  the  Romans,  who,  as 
the  mocking  song  of  the  victors  ran,  "  makede  him  a 
castel  of  a  mulne  post  "  ("he  weened  that  the  mill-sails 
were  mangonels"  goes  on  the  sarcastic  verse),  was  taken 
prisoner,  and  Henry  himself  captured.  Edward  cut  his 
way  into  the  Priory  only  to  join  in  his  father's  surrender. 
The  victory  of  Lewes  placed  Earl  Simon  at  the  head 
of  the  state.  "  Now  England  breathes  in  the  hope  of 
liberty,"  sang  a  poet  of  the  time;  "the  English  were  de- 
spised like  dogs,  but  now  they  have  lifted  up  their  head 
and  their  foes  are  vanquished."  But  the  moderation  of 
the  terms  agreed  upon  in  the  Mise  of  Lewes,  a  conven- 
tion between  the  King  and  his  captors,  shows  Simon's 
sense  of  the  difficulties  of  his  position.  The  question  of 
the  Provisions  was  again  to  be  submitted  to  arbitration; 
and  a  parliament  in  June,  to  which  four  knights  were 
summoned  from  every  county,  placed  the  administration 
till  this  arbitration  was  complete  in  the  hands  of  a  new 
council  of  nine  to  be  nominated  by  the  Earls  of  Leicester 


HISTORY  Or  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

and  Gloucester  and  the  patriotic  Bishop  of  Chichester. 
Responsibility  to  the  community  was  provided  for  by  the 
declaration  of  a  right  in  the  body  of  barons  and  prelates 
to  remove  either  of  the  Three  Electors,  who  in  turn 
could  displace  or  appoint  the  members  of  the  Council. 
Such  a  constitution  was  of  a  different  order  from  the 
cumbrous  and  oligarchical  committees  of  1258.  But  it 
had  little  time  to  work  in.  The  plans  for  a  fresh  arbi- 
tration broke  down.  Lewis  refused  to  review  his  de- 
cision, and  all  schemes  for  setting  fresh  judges  between 
the  King  and  his  people  were  defeated  by  a  formal  con- 
demnation of  the  barons'  cause  issued  by  the  Pope. 
Triumphant  as  he  was  indeed  Earl  Simon's  difficulties 
thickened  every  day.  The  Queen  with  Archbishop 
Boniface  gathered  an  army  in  France  for  an  invasion ; 
Roger  Mortimer  with  the  border  barons  was  still  in  arms 
and  only  held  in  check  by  Llewelyn.  It  was  impossible 
to  make  binding  terms  with  an  imprisoned  King,  yet  to 
release  Henry  without  terms  was  to  renew  the  war. 
The  imprisonment  too  gave  a  shock  to  public  feeling 
which  thinned  the  Earl's  ranks.  In  the  new  Parliament 
which  he  called  at  the  opening  of  1265  the  weakness  of 
the  patriotic  party  among  the  baronage  was  shown  in 
the  fact  that  only  twenty-three  earls  and  barons  could 
be  found  to  sit  beside  the  hundred  and  twenty  eccle- 
siastics. 

But  it  was  just  this  sense  of  his  weakness  which 
prompted  the  Earl  to  an  act  that  has  done  more  than  any 
incident  of  this  struggle  to  immortalize  his  name.  Had 
the  strife  been  simply  a  strife  for  power  between  the 
king  and  the  baronage  the  victory  of  either  would  have 
been  equally  fatal  in  its  results.  The  success  of  the  one 
would  have  doomed  England  to  a  royal  despotism,  that 
of  the  other  to  a  feudal  aristocracy.  Fortunately  for  our 
freedom  the  English  baronage  had  been  brought  too  low 
by  the  policy  of  the  kings  to  be  able  to  withstand  the 
crown  single-handed.  From  the  first  moment  of  the  con- 
test it  had  been  forced  to  make  its  cause  a  national  one. 
The  summons  of  two  knights  from  each  county,  elected 
in  its  county  court,  to  a  Parliament  in  1254,  even  before 


THE   CHAPTER.      1204—1291.  285 

the  opening  of  the  struggle,  was  a  recognition  of  the 
political  weight  of  the  country  gentry  which  was  con- 
firmed by  the  summons  of  four  knights  from  every  county 
to  the  Parliament  assembled  after  the  battle  of  Lewes. 
The  Provisions  of  Oxford,  in  stipulating  for  attendance 
and  counsel  on  the  part  of  twelve  delegates  of  the  "  com- 
monalty," gave  the  first  indication  of  a  yet  wider  appeal 
to  the  people  at  large.  But  it  was  the  weakness  of  his 
party  among  the  baronage  at  this  great  crisis  which  drove 
Earl  Simon  to  a  constitutional  change  of  mighty  issue  in 
our  history.  As  before,  he  summoned  two  knights  from 
every  county.  But  he  created  a  new  force  in  English 
politics  when  he  summoned  to  sit  beside  them  two 
citizens  from  every  borough.  The  attendance  of  delegates 
from  the  towns  had  long  been  usual  in  the  county  courts 
when  any  matter  respecting  their  interests  was  in  ques- 
tion ;  but  it  was  the  writ  issued  by  Earl  Simon  that  first 
summoned  the  merchant  and  the  trader  to  sit  beside  the 
knight  of  the  shire,  the  baron,  and  the  bishop  in  the  par- 
liament of  the  realm. 

It  is  only  this  great  event  however  which  enables  us 
to  understand  the  large  and  prescient  nature  of  Earl 
Simon's  designs.  Hardly  a  few  months  had  passed  away 
since  the  victory  of  Lewes  when  the  burghers  took  their 
seats  at  Westminster,  yet  his  government  was  tottering 
to  its  fall.  We  know  little  of  the  Parliament's  acts.  It 
seems  to  have  chosen  Simon  as  Justiciar  and  to  have 
provided  for  Edward's  liberation,  though  he  was  still  to 
live  under  surveillance  at  Hereford  and  to  surrender  his 
earldom  of  Chester  to  Simon,  who  was  thus  able  to 
communicate  with  his  Welsh  allies.  The  Earl  met  the 
dangers  from  without  with  complete  success.  In  Sep- 
tember 1264  a  general  muster  of  the  national  forces  on 
Barham  Down  and  a  contrary  wind  put  an  end  to  the 
projects  of  invasion  entertained  by  the  mercenaries  whom 
the  Queen  had  collected  in  Flanders;  the  threats  of 
France  died  away  into  negotiations  ;  the  Papal  Legate 
was  forbidden  to  cross  the  Channel,  arid  his  bulls  of  ex- 
communication were  flung  into  the  sea.  But  the 
difficulties  at  home  grew  more  formidable  every  day. 


286  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  restraint  upon  Henry  and  Edward  jarred  against 
the  national  feeling  of  loyalty,  and  estranged  the  mass 
of  Englishmen  who  always  side  with  the  weak.  Small 
as  the  patriotic  party  among  the  barons  had  been  from 
the  first,  it  grew  smaller  as  dissensions  broke  out  over 
the  spoils  of  victory.  The  Earl's  justice  and  resolve  to 
secure  the  public  peace  told  heavily  against  him.  John 
Giffard  left  him  because  he  refused  to  allow  him  to  exact 
ransom  from  a  prisoner,  contrary  to  the  agreement  made 
after  Lewes.  A  great  danger  opened  when  the  young 
Earl  of  Gloucester,  though  enriched  with  the  estates  of 
the  foreigners,  held  himself  aloof  from  the  Justiciar,  and 
resented  Leicester's  prohibition  of  a  tournament,  his 
naming  the  wardens  of  the  royal  castles  by  his  own 
authority,  his  holding  Edward's  fortresses  on  the  Welsh 
marches  by  his  own  garrisons. 

Gloucester's  later  conduct  proves  the  wisdom  of 
Leicester's  precautions.  In  ths  spring  Parliament  of 
12o5  he  openly  charged  the  Earl  with  violating  the 
Mise  of  Lewes,  with  tyranny,  and  with  aiming  at  the 
crown.  Before  its  close  he  withdrew  to  his  own  lands 
in  the  west  and  secretly  allied  himself  with  Roger  Mor- 
timer and  the  Marcher  barons.  Earl  Simon  soon  followed 
him  to  the  west,  taking  with  him  the  King  and  Edward. 
He  moved  along  the  Severn,  securing  its  towns,  advanced 
westward  to  Hereford,  and  was  marching  at  the  end  of 
June  along  bad  roads  into  the  heart  of  South  Wales  to 
attack  the  fortresses  of  Earl  Gilbert  in  Glamorgan  when 
Edward  suddenly  made  his  escape  from  Hereford  and 
joined  Gloucester  at  Ludlow.  The  moment  had  been 
skilfully  chosen,  and  Edward  showed  a  rare  ability  in 
the  movements  by  which  he  took  advantage  of  the  Earl's 
position.  Moving  rapidly  along  the  Severn  he  seized 
Gloucester  and  the  bridges  across  the  river,  destroyed 
the  ships  by  which  Leicester  strove  to  escape  across  the 
Channel  to  Bristol,  and  cut  him  off  altogether  from 
England.  By  this  movement  too  he  placed  himself 
between  the  Earl  and  his  son  Simon,  who  was  advancing 
from  the  East  to  his  father's  relief.  Turning  rapidly  on 
this  second  force  Edward  surprised  it  at  Kenilworth  and 


THE    CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  287 

drove  it  with  heavy  loss  within  the  walls  of  the  castle. 
But  the  success  was  more  than  compensated  by  the  op- 
portunity which  his  absence  gave  to  the  Earl  of  breaking 
the  line  of  the  Severn.  Taken  by  surprise  and  isolated 
as  he  was,  Simon  had  been  forced  to  seek  for  aid  and 
troops  in  an  avowed  alliance  with  Llewelyn,  and  it  was 
with  Welsh  reinforcements  that  he  turned  to  the  east. 
But  the  seizure  of  his  ships  and  of  the  bridges  of  the 
Severn  held  him  a  prisoner  in  Edward's  grasp,  and  a  fierce 
attack  drove  him  back,  with  broken  and  starving  forces, 
into  the  Welsh  hills.  In  utter  despair  he  struck  north- 
ward to  Hereford ;  but  the  absence  of  Edward  now 
enabled  him  on  the  2d  of  August  to  throw  his  troops  in 
boats  across  the  Severn  below  Worcester.  The  news 
drew  Edward  quickly  back  in  a  fruitless  counter-march 
to  the  river,  for  the  Earl  had  already  reached  Evesham 
by  a  long  night  march  on  the  morning  of  the  4th,  while 
his  son,  relieved  in  turn  by  Edward's  counter-march, 
had  pushed  in  the  same  night  to  the  little  town  of  Al- 
cester.  The  two  armies  were  now  but  some  ten  miles 
apart,  and  their  junction  seemed  secured.  But  both 
were  spent  with  long  marching,  and  while  the  Earl, 
listening  reluctantly  to  the  request  of  the  King  who 
accompanied  him,  halted  at  Evesham  for  mass  and  dinner, 
the  army  of  the  younger  Simon  halted  for  the  same 
purpose  at  Alcester. 

"  Those  two  dinners  doleful  were,  alas  I "  sings  Robert 
of  Gloucester ;  for  through  the  same  memorable  night 
EdAvard  was  hurrying  back  from  the  Severn  by  country 
cross-lanes  to  seize  the  fatal  gap  that  lay  between  them. 
As  morning  broke  his  army  lay  across  the  road  that  led 
northward  from  Evesham  to  Alcester.  Evesham  lies  in 
a  loop  of  the  river  Avon  where  it  bends  to  the  south  ; 
and  a  height  on  which  Edward  ranged  his  troops  closed 
the  one  outlet  from  it  save  across  the  river.  But  a  force 
had  been  thrown  over  the  river  under  Mortimer  to  seize 
the  bridges,  and  all  retreat  was  thus  finally  cut  off.  The 
approach  of  Edward's  army  called  Simon  to  the  front, 
and  for  the  moment  he  took  it  for  his  son's.  Though 
the  hope  soon  died  away  a  touch  of  soldierly  pride  moved 


288  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

him  as  he  recognized  in  the  orderly  advance  of  his 
enemies  a  proof  of  his  own  training.  "  By  the  arm  of 
St.  James,"  he  cried,  "  they  come  on  in  wise  fashion,  but 
it  was  from  me  that  they  learnt  it."  A  glance  however 
satisfied  him  of  the  hopelessness  of  a  struggle ;  it  was 
impossible  for  a  handful  of  horsemen  with  a  mob  of  half- 
armed  Welshmen  to  resist  the  disciplined  knighthood  of 
the  royal  army.  "  Let  us  commend  our  souls  to  God," 
Simon  said  to  the  little  group  around  him,  "for  our 
bodies  are  the  foe's."  He  bade  Hugh  Despenser  and  the 
rest  of  his  comrades  fly  from  the  field.  "  If  he  died," 
was  the  noble  answer,  "  they  had  no  will  to  live."  In 
three  hours  the  butchery  was  over.  The  Welsh  fled  at 
the  first  onset  like  sheep,  and  were  cut  ruthlessly  down 
in  the  cornfields  and  gardens  where  they  sought  refuge. 
The  little  group  of  knights  around  Simon  fought  des- 

Eerately,  falling  one  by  one  till  the  Earl  was  left  alone, 
o  terrible  were  his  sword-strokes  that  he  had  all  but 
gained  the  hill  top  when  a  lance  thrust  brought  his  horse 
to  the  ground,  but  Simon  still  rejected  the  summons  to 
yield  till  a  blow  from  behind  felled  him  mortally  wounded 
to  the  ground.  Then  with  a  last  cry  of  "  It  is  God's 
grace,"  the  soul  of  the  great  patriot  passed  away. 

The  triumphant  blare  of  trumpets  which  welcomed 
the  rescued  King  into  Evesham,  "his  men  weeping  for 
joy,"  rang  out  in  bitter  contrast  to  the  mourning  of  the 
realm.  It  sounded  like  the  announcement  of  a  reign  of 
terror.  The  rights  and  laws  for  which  men  had  toiled 
and  fought  so  long  seemed  to  have  been  swept  away  in 
an  hour.  Every  town  which  had  supported  Earl  Simon 
was  held  to  be  at  the  King's  mercy,  its  franchises  to  be 
forfeited.  The  Charter  of  Lynn  was  annulled;  London 
was  marked  out  as  the  special  object  of  Henry's  ven- 
geance, and  the  farms  and  merchandise  of  its  citizens 
were  seized  as  first-fruits  of  its  plunder.  The  darkness 
which  on  that  fatal  morning  hid  their  books  from  the 
monks  of  Evesham  as  they  sang  in  choir  was  but  a 
presage  of  the  gloom  which  fell  on  the  religious  houses. 
From  Ramsay,  from  Evesham,  from  St.  Alban's  rose  the 
same  cry  of  havoc  and  rapine.  But  the  plunder  of  monk 


THE  CHARTER.      1201 — 1291.  289 

and  burgess  was  little  to  the  vast  sentence  of  confiscation 
which  the  mere  fact  of  rebellion  was  held  to  have  passed 
on  all  the  adherents  of  Earl  Simon.  To  "  disinherit " 
these  of  their  lands  was  to  confiscate  half  the  estates  of 
the  landed  gentry  of  England ;  but  the  hotter  royalists 
declared  them  disinherited,  and  Henry  was  quick  to 
lavish  their  lands  away  on  favorites  and  foreigners.  The 
very  chroniclers  of  their  party  recall  the  pillage  with 
shame.  But  all  thought  of  resistance  lay  hushed  in  a 
general  terror.  Even  the  younger  Simon  "  saw  no  other 
rede "  than  to  release  his  prisoners.  His  arnry,  after 
finishing  its  meal,  was  again  on  its  march  to  join  the 
Earl  when  the  news  of  his  defeat  met  it,  heralded  by  a 
strange  darkness  that,  rising  suddenly  in  the  north-west 
and  following  as  it  were  on  Edward's  track,  served  to 
shroud  the  mutilations  and  horrors  of  the  battle-field. 
The  news  was  soon  fatally  confirmed.  Simon  himself 
CDuld  see  from  afar  his  father's  head  borne  off  on  a  spear- 
point  to  be  mocked  at  Wigmore.  But  the  pursuit 
streamed  away  southward  and  westward  through  the 
streets  of  Tewkesbury,  heaped  with  corpses  of  the  panic- 
struck  Welshmen  whom  the  townsmen  slaughtered 
without  pity  ;  and  there  was  no  attack  as  the  little  force 
fell  back  through  the  darkness  and  big  thunder-drops  in 
despair  upon  Kenil  worth.  "  I  may  hang  up  my  axe,"  are 
the  bitter  words  which  a  poet  attributes  to  their  leader, 
"for  feebly  have  I  gone  ;"  and  once  within  the  castle  he 
gave  way  to  a  wild  sorrow,  day  after  day  tasting  neither 
meat  nor  drink. 

He  was  roused  into  action  again  by  news  of  the  shame- 
ful indignities  which  the  Marcher-lords  had  offered  to 
the  body  of  the  great  Earl  before  whom  they  had  trem- 
bled so  long.  The  knights  around  him  broke  out  at  the 
tidings  in  a  passionate  burst  of  fury,  and  clamored  for 
the  blood  of  Richard  of  Cornwall  and  his  son,  who  were 
prisoners  in  the  castle.  But  Simon  had  enough  noble- 
ness left  to  interpose.  "  To  God  and  him  alone  was  it 
owing  "  Richard  owned  afterwards  "  that  I  Was  snatched 
from  death."  The  captives  were  not  only  saved,  but  set 
free.  A  Parliament  had  been  called  at  Winchester  at 

19 


290  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  opening  of  September,  and  its  mere  assembly  prom- 
ised an  end  to  the  reign  of  utter  lawlessness.  A  power- 
ful party,  too,  was  known  to  exist  in  the  royal  camp 
which,  hostile  as  it  had  shown  itself  to  Earl  Simon, 
shared  his  love  for  English  liberties,  and  the  liberation 
of  Richard  was  sure  to  aid  its  efforts.  At  the  head  of 
this  party  stood  the  young  Earl  of  Gloucester,  Gilbert  of 
Clare,  to  whose  action  above  all  the  Earl's  overthrow 
was  due.  And  with  Gilbert  stood  Edward  himself.  The 
passion  for  law,  the  instinct  of  good  government,  which 
were  to  make  his  reign  so  memorable  in  our  history,  had 
declared  themselves  from  the  first.  He  had  sided  with 
the  barons  at  the  outset  of  their  struggle  with  Henry  ; 
he  had  striven  to  keep  his  father  true  to  the  Provisions 
of  Oxford.  It  was  only  when  the  figure  of  Earl  Simon 
seemed  to  tower  above  that  of  Henry  himself,  when  the 
Crown  seemed  falling  into  bondage,  that  Edward  passed 
to  the  royal  side ;  and  now  that  the  danger  which  he 
dreaded  was  over  he  returned  to  his  older  attitude.  In 
the  first  flush  of  victory,  while  the  doom  of  Simon  was 
as  yet  unknown,  Edward  had  stood  alone  in  desiring  his 
captivity  against  the  cry  of  the  Marcher-lords  for  his 
blood.  When  all  was  done  he  wept  over  the  corpse  of 
his  cousin  and  playfellow,  Henry  de  Montfort,  and  fol- 
lowed the  Earl's  body  to  the  tomb.  But  great  as  was 
Edward's  position  after  the  victory  of  Evesham,  his 
moderate  counsels  were  as  yet  of  little  avail.  His  efforts 
in  fact  were  met  by  those  of  Henry's  second  son,  Ed- 
mund, who  had  received  the  lands  and  earldom  of  Earl 
Simon,  and  whom  the  dread  of  any  restoration  of  the 
house  of  De  Montfort  set  at  the  head  of  the  ultra-royal- 
ists. Nor  was  any  hope  of  moderation  to  be  found  in 
the  Parliament  which  met  in  September  1265.  It  met 
in  the  usual  temper  of  a  restoration-Parliament  to  legal- 
ize the  outrages  of  the  previous  month.  The  prisoners 
who  had  been  released  from  the  dungeons  of  the  barons 
poured  into  Winchester  to  add  fresh  violence  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  Marchers.  The  wives  of  the  captive 
loyalists  and  the  widows  of  the  slain  were  summoned  to 
give  fresh  impulse  to  the  reaction.  Their  place  of  meet- 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 — 1291.  291 

ing  added  fuel  to  the  fiery  passions  of  the  throng,  for 
Winchester  was  fresh  from  its  pillage  by  the  younger 
Simon  on  his  way  to  Kenilworth,  and  its  stubborn 
loyalty  must  have  been  fanned  into  a  flame  by  the 
losses  it  had  endured.  In  such  an  assembly  no  voice  of 
moderation  could  find  a  hearing.  The  four  bishops  who 
favored  the  national  cause,  the  bishops  of  London  and 
Lincoln,  of  Worcester  and  Chichester,  were  excluded 
from  it,  and  the  heads  of  the  religious  houses  were 
summoned  for  the  mere  purpose  of  extortion.  Its 
measures  were  but  a  confirmation  of  the  violence  which 
had  been  wrought.  All  grants  made  during  the  King's 
"  captivity  "  were  revoked.  The  house  of  De  Montfort 
was  banished  from  the  realm.  The  charter  of  London 
was  annulled.  The  adherents  of  Earl  Simon  were  dis- 
inherited and  seizin  of  their  lands  was  given  to  the  King. 
Henry  at  once  appointed  commissioners  to  survey  and 
take  possession  of  his  spoil  while  he  moved  to  Windsor 
to  triumph  in  the  humiliation  of  London.  Its  mayor  and 
forty  of  its  chief  citizens  waited  in  the  castle  yard  only 
to  be  thrown  into  prison  in  spite  of  a  safe-conduct,  and 
Henry  entered  his  capital  in  triumph  as  into  an  enemy's 
city.  The  surrender  of  Dover  came  to  fill  his  cup  of 
joy,  for  Richard  and  Amaury  of  Montfort  had  sailed  with 
the  Earl's  treasure  to  enlist  foreign  mercenaries,  and  it 
was  by  this  port  that  their  force  was  destined  to  land. 
But  a  rising  of  the  prisoners  detained  there  compelled 
its  surrender  in  October,  and  the  success  of  the  royalists 
seemed  complete.  In  reality  their  difficulties  were  but 
beginning.  Their  triumph  over  Earl  Simon  had  been  a 
triumph  over  the  religious  sentiment  of  the  time,  and  re- 
ligion avenged  itself  in  its  own  way.  Everywhere  the 
Earl's  death  was  looked  upon  as  a  martyrdom  ;  and  monk 
and  friar  united  in  praying  for  the  souls  of  the  men  who 
fell  at  Evesham  as  for  soldiers  of  Christ.  It  was  soon 
whispered  that  Heaven  was  attesting  the  sanctity  of  De 
Montfort  by  miracles  at  his  tomb.  How  great  was  the 
effect  of  this  belief  was  seen  in  the  efforts  of  King  and 
Pope  to  suppress  the  miracles,  and  in  their  continuance 
not  only  through  the  reign  of  Edward  the  First  but  even 


292  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

in  the  days  of  his  successor.  But  its  immediate  result 
was  a  sudden  revival  of  hope.  "  Sighs  are  changed  into 
songs  of  praise,"  breaks  out  a  monk  of  the  time,  "  and  the 
greatness  of  our  former  joy  has  come  to  life  again  ! " 
Nor  was  it  in  miracles  alone  that  the  "  faithful,"  as  they 
proudly  styled  themselves,  began  to  look  for  relief  "  from 
the  oppression  of  the  malignants."  A  monk  of  St.  Alban's 
who  was  penning  a  eulogy  of  Earl  Simon  in  the  midst  of 
this  uproar  saw  the  rise  of  a  new  spirit  of  resistance  in 
the  streets  of  the  little  town.  In  dread  of  war  it  was 
guarded  and  strongly  closed  with  bolts  and  bars,  and  re- 
fused entrance  to  all  strangers,  and  above  all  to  horse- 
men, who  wished  to  pass  through.  The  Constable  of 
Hertford,  an  old  foe  of  the  townsmen,  boasted  that  spite 
of  bolts  and  bars  he  would  enter  the  place  and  carry  off 
x four  of  the  best  villains  captive.  He  contrived  to  make 
his  way  in ;  but  as  he  loitered  idly  about  a  butcher  who 
passed  by  heard  him  ask  his  men  how  the  wind  stood. 
The  butcher  guessed  his  design  to  burn  the  town,  and 
felled  him  to  the  ground.  The  blow  roused  the  towns- 
men. They  secured  the  Constable  and  his  followers, 
struck  off  their  heads,  and  fixed  them  at  the  four  corners 
of  the  borough. 

The  popular  reaction  gave  fresh  heart  to  the  younger 
Simon.  Quitting  Kenilworth,  he  joined  in  November 
John  D'Eyvill  and  Baldewin  Wake  in  the  Isle  of  Axholme 
where  the  Disinherited  were  gathering  in  arms.  So  fast 
did  horse  and  foot  flow  in  to  him  that  Edward  himself 
hurried  into  Lincolnshire  to  meet  this  new  danger.  He 
saw  that  the  old  strife  was  just  breaking  out  again.  The 
garrison  of  Kenilworth  scoured  the  country  ;  the  men  of 
the  Cinque  Ports,  putting  wives  and  children  on  board 
their  barks,  swept  the  Channel  and  harried  the  coasts ; 
while  Llewelyn,  who  had  brought  about  the  dissolution 
of  Parliament  by  a  raid  upon  Chester,  butchered  the 
forces  sent  against  him  and  was  master  of  the  border. 
The  one  thing  needed  to  link  the  forces  of  resistance  to- 
gether was  a  head,  and  such  a  head  the  appearance  of 
Simon  at  Axholme  seemed  to  promise.  But  Edward  was 
resolute  in  his  plan  of  conciliation.  Arriving  before  thq 


THE   CHARTEK.      1204 — 1291.  293 

camp  at  the  close  of  1265,  he  at  once  entered  into  nego- 
tiations with  his  cousin,  and  prevailed  on  him  to  quit  the 
island  and  appear  before  the  King.  Richard  of  Cornwall 
welcomed  Simon  at  the  court,  he  presented  him  to  Henry 
as  the  saviour  of  his  life,  and  on  his  promise  to  surrender 
Kenilworth  Henry  gave  him  the  kiss  of  peace.  In  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  Roger  Mortimer  and  the  Marcher- 
lords  success  seemed  to  be  crowning  this  bold  stroke  of 
the  peace  party  when  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  interposed. 
Desirous  as  he  was  of  peace,  the  blood  of  De  Montfort 
lay  between  him  and  the  Earl's  sons,  and  the  safety  of 
the  one  lay  in  the  ruin  of  the  other.  In  the  face  of  this 
danger  Earl  Gilbert  threw  his  weight  into  the  scale  of 
the  ultra-royalists,  and  peace  became  impossible.  The 
question  of  restitution  was  shelved  by  a  reference  to  ar- 
bitrators ;  and  Simon,  detained  in  spite  of  a  safe-conduct, 
moved  in  Henry's  train  at  Christmas  to  witness  the  sur- 
render of  Kenilworth  which  had  been  stipulated  as  the 
price  of  his  full  reconciliation  with  the  King.  But  hot 
blood  was  now  stirred  again  on  both  sides.  The  garrison 
replied  to  the  royal  summons  by  a  refusal  to  surrender. 
They  had  received  ward  of  the  castle,  they  said,  not  from 
Simon  but  from  the  Countess,  and  to  none  but  her  would 
they  give  it  up.  The  refusal  was  not  likely  to  make 
Simon's  position  an  easier  one.  On  his  return  to  London 
the  award  of  the  arbitrators  bound  him  to  quit  the  realm 
and  not  to  return  save  with  the  assent  of  King  and  bar- 
onage when  all  were  at  peace.  He  remained  for  a  while 
in  free  custody  at  London  ;  but  warnings  that  he  was 
doomed  to  life-long  imprisonment  drove  him  to  flight, 
and  he  finally  sought  a  refuge  over  sea. 

His  escape  set  England  again  on  fire.  Llewelyn  wasted 
the  border  ;  the  Cinque  Ports  held  the  sea ;  the  garrison 
of  Kenilworth  pushed  their  raids  as  far  as  Oxford  ;  Balde- 
win  Wake  with  a  band  of  the  Disinherited  threw  himself 
into  the  woods  and  harried  the  eastern  counties ;  Sir 
Adam  Gurdon,  a  knight  of  gigantic  size  and  renowned 
prowess,  wasted  with  a  smaller  party  the  shires  of  the 
south.  In  almost  every  county  bands  of  outlaws  were 
seeking  a  livelihood  in  rapine  and  devastation,  while  the 


294  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

royal  treasury  stood  empty  and  the  enormous  fine  im- 
posed upon  London  had  been  swept  into  the  coffers  of 
French  usurers.  But  a  stronger  hand  than  the  King's 
was  now  at  the  head  of  affairs,  and  Edward  met  his  as- 
sailants with  untiring  energy.  King  Richard's  son, 
Henry  of  Almaine,  was  sent  with  a  large  force  to  the 
north ;  Mortimer  hurried  to  hold  the  Welsh  border ; 
Edmund  was  despatched  to  Warwick  to  hold  Kenilworth 
in  check ;  while  Edward  himself  marched  at  the  opening 
of  March  to  the  south.  The  Berkshire  woods  were  soon 
cleared,  and  at  Whitsuntide  Edward  succeeded  in  dis- 
persing Adam  Gurdon's  band  and  in  capturing  its  re- 
nowned leader  in  single  combat.  The  last  blow  was 
already  given  to  the  rising  of  the  north,  where  Henry  of 
Almaine  surprised  the  Disinherited  at  Chesterfield  and 
took  their  leader,  the  Earl  of  Derby,  in  his  bed.  Though 
Edmund  had  done  little  but  hold  the  Kenilworth 
knights  in  check,  the  submission  of  the  rest  of  the 
country  now  enabled  the  ro}ral  army  to  besiege  it  in  force. 
But  the  King  was  penniless,  and  the  Parliament  which 
he  called  to  replenish  his  treasury  in  August  showed  the 
resolve  of  the  nation  that  the  strife  should  cease.  They 
would  first  establish  peace,  if  peace  were  possible,  they 
said,  and  then  answer  the  King's  demand.  Twelve  com- 
missioners, with  Earl  Gilbert  at  their  head,  were  ap- 
pointed on  Henry's  assent  to  arrange  terms  of  reconcilia- 
tion. They  at  once  decided  that  none  should  be  utterly 
disinherited  for  their  part  in  the  troubles,  but  that  liberty 
of  redemption  should  be  left  open  to  all.  Furious  at  the 
prospect  of  being  forced  to  disgorge  their  spoil,  Mortimer 
and  the  ultra-royalists  broke  out  in  mad  threats  of  vio- 
lence, even  against  the  life  of  the  Papal  legate  who  had 
pressed  for  the  reconciliation.  But  the  power  of  the 
ultra-royalists  was  over.  The  general  resolve  was  not 
to  be  shaken  by  the  clamor  of  a  faction,  and  Mortimer's 
rout  at  Brecknock  by  Llewelyn,  the  one  defeat  that 
checkered  the  tide  of  success,  had  damaged  that  leader's 
influence.  Backed  by  Edward  and  Earl  Gilbert,  the 
legate  met  their  opposition  with  a  threat  of  excommuni- 
csrMon,  and  Mortimer  withdrew  sullenly  from  the  camp. 


THE  CHARTER.     1204—1291.  295 

Fresh  trouble  in  the  country  and  the  seizure  of  the  Isle 
of  Ely  by  a  band  of  the  Disinherited  quickened  the  labors 
of  the  Twelve.  At  the  close  of  September  they  pro- 
nounced their  award,  restoring  their  lands  to  all  who 
made  submission  on  a  graduated  scale  of  redemption, 
promising  indemnity  for  all  wrongs  done  during  the 
troubles,  and  leaving  the  restoration  of  the  house  of  De 
Montfort  to  the  royal  will.  But  to  these  provisions  were 
added  an  emphatic  demand  that  "  the  King  fully  keep 
and  observe  those  liberties  of  the  Church,  charters  of 
liberties,  and  forest  charters,  which  he  is  expressly  and 
by  his  own  mouth  bound  to  preserve  and  keep."  "  Let 
the  King,"  they  add,  "  establish  on  a  lasting  foundation 
those  concessions  which  he  has  hitherto  made  of  his  own 
will  and  not  on  compulsion,  and  those  needful  ordinances 
which  have  been  devised  by  his  subjects  and  by  his  own 
good  pleasure." 

With  this  Award  the  struggle  came  to  an  end.  The 
garrison  of  Kenil worth  held  out  indeed  till  November, 
and  the  full  benefit  of  the  Ban  was  only  secured  when 
Earl  Gilbert  in  the  opening  of  the  following  year  sud- 
denly appeared  in  arms  and  occupied  London.  But  the 
Earl  was  satisfied,  the  Disinherited  were  at  last  driven 
from  Ely,  and  Llewelyn  was  brought  to  submission  by 
the  appearance  of  an  army  at  Shrewsbury.  All  was  over 
by  the  close  of  1267.  His  father's  age  and  weakness,  his 
own  brilliant  military  successes,  left  Edward  practically  in 
possession  of  the  royal  power ;  and  his  influence  at  once 
made  itself  felt.  There  was  no  attempt  to  return  to  the  . 
misrule  of  Henry's  reign,  to  his  projects  of  continental 
aggrandizement  or  internal  despotism.  The  constitu- 
tional system  of  government  for  which  the  Barons  had 
fought  was  finally  adopted  by  the  Crown,  and  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Maiiborough  which  assembled  in  November, 
1267,  renewed  the  provisions  by  which  the  baronage  had 
remedied  the  chief  abuses  of  the  time  in  their  Provisions 
of  Oxford  and  Westminster.  The  appointment  of  all 
officers  of  state  indeed  was  jealously  reserved  to  the 
crown.  But  the  royal  expenditure  was  brought  within 
bounds.  Taxation  was  only  imposed  with  the  assent  of 


296  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  Great  Council.  So  utterly  was  the  laud  at  rest  that 
Edward  felt  himself  free  to  take  the  cross  in  1268,  and  to 
join  the  Crusade  which  was  being  undertaken  by  St. 
Lewis  of  France.  He  reached  Tunis  only  to  find  Lewis 
dead  and  his  enterprise  a  failure,  wintered  in  Sicily, 
made  his  way  to  Acre  in  the  spring  of  1271,  and  spent 
more  than  a  year  in  exploits  which  want  of  force  pre- 
vented from  growing  into  a  serious  campaign.  He  was 
already  on  his  way  home  when  the  death  of  Henry  the 
Third,  in  November,  1272,  called  him  to  the  throne. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EDWARD     THE     FIRST. 

1272-1307. 

IN  his  own  day  and  among  his  own  subjects  Edward 
the  First  was  the  object  of  an  almost  boundless  admira- 
tion. He  was  in  the  truest  sense  a  national  King.  At 
the  moment  when  the  last  trace  of  foreign  conquest 
passed  away,  when  the  descendants  of  those  who  won 
and  those  who  lost  at  Senlac  blended  forever  into  an 
English  people,  England  saw  in  her  ruler  no  stranger 
but  an  Englishman.  The  national  tradition  returned  in 
more  than  the  golden  hair  or  the  English  name  which 
linked  him  to  our  earlier  Kings.  Edward's  very  temper 
was  English  to  the  core.  In  good  as  in  evil  he  stands 
out  as  the  typical  representative  of  the  race  he  ruled, 
like  them  wilful  and  imperious,  tenacious  of  his  rights, 
indomitable  in  his  pride,  dogged,  stubborn,  slow  of 
apprehension,  narrow  in  sympathy,  but  like  them,  too, 
just  in  the  main,  unselfish,  laborious,  conscientious, 
naughtily  observant  of  truth  and  self-respect,  temperate, 
reverent  of  duty,  religious.  It  is  this  oneness  with  the 
character  of  his  people  which  parts  the  temper  of  Edward 
from  what  had  till  now  been  the  temper  of  his  house. 
He  inherited  indeed  from  the  Angevins  their  fierce  and 
passionate  wrath;  his  punishments,  when  he  punished 
in  anger,  were  without  pity;  and  a  priest  who  ventured 
at  a  moment  of  storm  into  his  presence  with  a  remon- 
strance, dropped  dead  from  sheer  fright  at  his  feet.  But 
his  nature  had  nothing  of  the  hard  selfishness,  the 
vindictive  obstinacy  which  had  so  long  characterized  the 
house  of  Arijou.  His  wrath  passed  as  quickly  as  it 
gathered ;  and  for  the  most  part  his  conduct  was  that  of 


S98  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

an  impulsive,  generous  man,  trustful,  averse  from  cruelty, 
prone  to  forgive.  "  No  man  ever  asked  mercy  of  me,"  he 
said  in  his  old  age,  "and  was  refused."  The  rough 
soldierly  nobleness  of  his  nature  broke  out  in  incidents 
like  that  at  Falkirk,  where  he  lay  on  the  bare  ground 
among  his  men,  or  in  his  refusal  during  a  Welsh  campaign 
to  drink  of  the  one  cask  of  wine  which  had  been  saved 
from  marauders.  "  It  is  I  who  have  brought  you  into 
this  strait,"  he  said  to  his  thirsty  fellow-soldiers,  "  and  I 
will  have  no  advantage  of  you  in  meat  or  drink." 
Beneath  the  stern  imperiousness  of  his  outer  bearing  lay 
in  fact  a  strange  tenderness  and  sensitiveness  to  affection. 
Every  subject  throughout  his  realm  was  drawn  closer  to 
the  King,  who  wept  bitterly  at  the  news  of  his  father's 
death,  though  it  gave  him  a  crown,  whose  fiercest  burst  of 
vengeance  was  called  out  by  an  insult  to  his  mother, 
whose  crosses  rose  as  memorials  of  his  love  and  sorrow 
at  every  spot  where  his  wife's  bier  rested.  "  I  loved  her 
tenderly  in  her  lifetime,"  wrote  Edward  to  Eleanor's 
friend,  the  Abbot  of  Clugny ;  "  I  do  not  cease  to  love 
her  now  she  is  dead."  And  as  it  was  with  mother  and 
wife,  so  it  was  with  his  people  at  large.  All  the  self- 
concentrated  isolation  of  the  foreign  Kings  disappeared 
in  Edward.  He  was  the  first  English  ruler  since  the 
Conquest  who  loved  his  people  with  a  personal  love  and 
craved  for  their  love  back  again.  To  his  trust  in  them 
we  owe  our  Parliament,  to  his  care  for  them  the  great 
statutes  which  stand  in  the  forefront  of  our  laws.  Even 
in  his  struggles  with  her  England  understood  a  temper 
which  was  so  perfectly  her  own,  and  the  quarrels  between 
King  and  people  during  his  reign  are  quarrels  where, 
doggedly  as  they  fought,  neither  disputant  doubted  for  a 
moment  the  worth  or  affection  of  the  other.  Few  scenes 
in  our  history  are  more  touching  than  a  scene  during  the 
long  contest  over  the  Charter,  when  Edward  stood  face 
to  face  with  his  people  in  Westminster  Hall,  and  with  a 
sudden  burst  of  tears  owned  himself  frankly  in  the 
wrong. 

But  it   was  just  this  sensitiveness,  this  openness  to 
•niter  impressions  and  outer  influences,  that  led  to  the 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  299 

strange  contradictions  which  meet  us  in  Edward's  career. 
His  reign  was  a  time  in  which  a  foreign  influence  told 
strongly  on  our  manners,  our  literature,  our  national 
spirit,  for  the  sudden  rise  of  France  into  a  compact  and 
organized  monarchy  was  now  making  its  influence  dom- 
inant in  Western  Europe.  The  "  chivalry  "  so  familiar 
to  us  in  the  pages  of  Froissart,  that  picturesque  mimicry 
of  high  sentiment,  of  heroism,  love,  and  courtesy  before 
which  all  depth  and  reality  of  nobleness  disappeared  to 
make  room  for  the  coarsest  profligacy,  the  narrowest 
caste-spirit,  and  a  brutal  indifference  to  human  suffering, 
was  specially  of  French  creation.  There  was  a  noble- 
ness in  Edward's  nature  from  which  the  baser  influences 
of  this  chivalry  fell  away.  His  life  was  pure,  his  piety, 
save  when  it  stooped  to  the  superstition  of  the  time, 
manly  and  sincere,  while  his  high  sense  of  duty  saved 
him  from  the  frivolous  self-indulgence  of  his  successors. 
But  he  was  far  from  being  wholly  free  from  the  taint  of 
his  age.  His  passionate  desire  was  to  be  a  model  of  the 
fashionable  chivalry  of  his  day.  His  frame  was  that  of 
a  born  soldier — tall,  deep-chested,  long  of  limb,  capable 
alike  of  endurance  or  action,  and  he  shared  to  the  full 
his  people's  love  of  venture  and  hard  fighting.  When 
he  encountered  Adam  Gurdon  after  Evesham  he  forced 
him  single-handed  to  beg  for  mercy.  At  the  opening  of 
his  reign  he  saved  his  life  by  sheer  fighting  in  a  tourna- 
ment at  Challon.  It  was  this  love  of  adventure  which 
lent  itself  to  the  frivolous  unreality  of  the  new  chivalry. 
His  fame  as  a  general  seemed  a  small  thing  to  Edward 
when  compared  with  his  fame  as  a  knight.  At  his 
"Round  Table  of  Kenilworth"  a  hundred  lords  and 
ladies,  "  clad  all  in  silk,"  renewed  the  faded  glories  of 
Arthur's  Court.  The  false  air  of  romance  which  was 
soon  to  turn  the  gravest  political  resolutions  into  out- 
bursts of  sentimental  feeling  appeared  in  his  "  Vow  of 
the  Swan,"  when  rising  at  the  royal  board  he  swore  on 
the  dish  before  him  to  avenge  on  Scotland  the  murder  of 
Comyn.  Chivalry  exerted  on  him  a  yet  more  fatal  in- 
fluence in  its  narrowing  of  his  sympathy  to  the  noble 
class  and  in  its  exclusion  of  the  peasant  and  the  crafts- 


300  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

man  from  all  claim  to  pity.  "  Knight  without  reproach  " 
as  he  was,  he  looked  calmly  on  at  the  massacre  of  the 
burghers  of  Berwick,  and  saw  in  William  Wallace  noth- 
ing but  a  common  robber. 

The  French  notion  of  chivalry  had  hardly  more  power 
over  Edward's  miiid  than  the  French  conception  of  king- 
ship, feudality,  and  law.  The  rise  of  a  lawyer  class  was 
everywhere  hardening  customary  into  written  rights, 
allegiance  into  subjection,  loose  ties  such  as  commenda- 
tion into  a  definite  vassalage.  But  it  was  specially 
through  French  influence,  the  influence  of  St.  Lewis  and 
his  successors,  that  the  imperial  theories  of  the  Roman 
Law  were  brought  to  bear  upon  this  natural  tendency  of 
the  time.  When  the  "  sacred  majesty  "  of  the  Csesars 
was  transferred  by  a  legal  fiction  to  the  royal  head  of  a 
feudal  baronage^every  constitutional  relation  was  changed. 
The  "  defiance  "  by  which  a  vassal  renounced  service  to 
his  lord  became  treason,  his  after  resistance  "  sacrilege." 
That  Edward  could  appreciate  what  was  sound  and 
noble  in  the  legal  spirit  around  him  was  shown  in  his 
reforms  of  our  judicature  and  our  Parliament ;  but  there 
was  something  as  congenial  to  his  mind  in  its  definite- 
ness,  its  rigidity,  its  narrow  technicalities.  He  was  never 
wilfully  unjust,  but  he  was  too  often  captious  in  his 
justice,*  fond  of  legal  chicanery,  prompt  to  take  advantage 
of  the  letter  of  the  law.  The  high  conception  of  royalty 
which  he  borrowed  from  St.  Lewis  united  with  this  legal 
turn  of  mind  in  the  worst  acts  of  his  reign.  Of  rights  or 
liberties  unregistered  in  charter  or  roll  Edward  would 
know  nothing,  while  his  own  good  sense  was  overpowered 
by  the  majesty  of  his  crown.  It  was  incredible  to  him 
that  Scotland  should  revolt  against  a  legal  bargain  which 
made  her  national  independence  conditional  on  the  terms 
extorted  from  a  claimant  of  her  throne ;  nor  could  he 
view  in  any  other  light  but  as  treason  the  resistance  of 
his  own  baronage  to  an  arbitrary  taxation  which  their 
fathers  had  borne. 

It  is  in  the  anomalies  of  such  a  character  as  this,  in  its 
strange  mingling  of  justice  and  wrong-doing,  of  grandeur 
and  littleness,  that  we  must  look  for  any  fair  explanation 


THE   CHARTER.       1204—1291.  801 

of  much  that  has  since  been  bitterly  blamed  in  Edward's 
conduct  and  policy.     But  what  none  of  these  anomalies 
can  hide  from  us  is  the   height  of  moral  temper  which 
shows   itself  in    the    tenor    of  his   rule.     Edward  was 
every  inch  a  king  ;  but  his  notion  of  kingship  was  a  lofty 
and  a  noble  one.     He  loved  power ;  he  believed  in  his 
sovereign  rights  and  clung  to  them  with   a  stubborn  te- 
nacity.    But  his  main  end  in  clinging  to  them  was  the 
welfare  of  his  people.     Nothing  better  proves  the  self- 
command  which  he  drew  from  the  purpose  he  set  before 
him  than  his  freedom  from  the  common  sin  of  great  rulers 
— the  lust  of  military  glory.     He  was  the  first  of  our 
kings  since  William  the  Conqueror  who  combined  mil- 
itary genius  with  political  capacity ;  but  of  the  warrior's 
temper,  of  the  temper  that  finds  delight  in  war,  he  had 
little  or  none.     His  freedom  from  it  was  the  more  remark- 
able that  Edward  was  a  great  soldier.     His  strategy  in 
the  campaign  before  Evesham  marked  him  as  a  consum- 
mate general.     Earl  Simon  was  forced  to  admire  the  skill 
of  his  advance  on  the  fatal  field,  and  the  operations  by 
which  he  met  the  risings  that  followed  it  were  a  model  of 
rapidity  and  military  grasp.     In  his  Welsh  campaigns  he 
was  soon  to   show   a   tenacity  and  force   of  will   which 
wrested  victory  out  of  the  midst  of  defeat.     He  could 
head  a  furious  charge  of  horse  as  at  Lewes,  or  organize  a 
commissariat  which  enabled  him  to  move  army  after  army 
across  the  harried  Lowlands.     In  his  old  age  he  was 
quick  to  discover  the  value  of  the  English  archery  and 
to  employ  it  as  a  means  of  victory  at  Falkirk.     But  mas- 
ter as  he  was  of  the  art  of  war,  and  forced  from  time  to 
time  to  show  his  mastery  in  great  campaigns,  in  no  single 
instance  was  he  the  assailant.     He  fought  only  when  he 
was  forced   to   fight ;  and   when   fighting  was  over  he 
turned  back  quietly  to  the  work  of  administration  and 
the  making  of  laws. 

War  in  fact  was  with  Edward  simply  a  means  of  carry- 
ing out  the  ends  of  statesmanship,  and  it  was  in  the 
character  of  his  statesmanship  that  his  real  greatness  made 
itself  felt.  His  policy  was  an  English  policy ;  he  was 
firm  to  retain  what  was  left  of  the  French  dominion  of 


302  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

his  race,  but  he  abandoned  from  the  first  all  dreams  of 
recovering  the  wider  dominions  which  his  grandfather 
had  lost.  His  mind  was  not  on  that  side  of  the  Channel, 
but  on  this.  He  concentrated  his  energies  on  the  consol- 
idation and  good  government  of  England  itself.  We  can 
only  fairly  judge  the  annexation  of  Wales  or  his  attempt 
to  annex  Scotland  if  we  look  on  his  efforts  in  either 
quarter  as  parts  of  the  same  scheme  of  national  adminis- 
tration to  which  we  owe  his  final  establishment  of  our 
judicature,  our  legislation,  our  parliament.  The  charac- 
ter of  his  action  was  no  doubt  determined  in  great  part 
by  the  general  mood  of  his  age,  an  age  whose  special  task 
and  aim  seemed  to  be  that  of  reducing  to  distinct  form 
the  principles  which  had  sprung  into  a  new  and  vigorous 
life  during  the  age  which  preceded  it.  As  the  opening 
of  the  thirteenth  century  had  been  an  age  of  founders, 
creators,  discoverers,  so  its  close  was  an  age  of  lawyers, 
of  rulers  such  as  St.  Lewis  of  France  or  Alfonzo  the  Wise 
of  Castille,  organizers,  administrators,  framers  of  laws  and 
institutions.  It  was  to  this  class  that  Edward  himself 
belonged.  He  had  little  of  creative  genius,  of  political 
originality,  but  he  possessed  in  a  high  degree  the  passion 
for  order  and  good  government,  the  faculty  of  organiza- 
tion, and  a  love  of  law  which  broke  out  even  in  the  legal 
chicanerj'  to  which  he  sometimes  stooped.  In  the  judi- 
cial reforms  to  which  so  much  of  his  attention  was  di- 
rected he  showed  himself,  if  not  an  "English  Justinian," 
at  any  rate  a  clear-sighted  and  judicious  man  of  business, 
developing,  reforming,  bringing  into  a  shape  which  has 
borne  the  test  of  five  centuries'  experience  the  institutions 
of  his  predecessors.  If  the  excellence  of  a  statesman's 
work  is  to  be  measured  by  its  duration  and  the  faculty  it 
has  shown  of  adapting  itself  to  the  growth  and  develop- 
ment of  a  nation,  then  the  work  of  Edward  rises  to  the 
highest  standard  of  excellence.  Our  law  courts  preserve 
to  this  very  day  the  form  which  he  gave  them.  Mighty 
as  has  been  the  growth  of  our  Parliament,  it  has  grown 
on  the  lines  which  he  laid  down.  The  great  roll  of  Eng- 
lish Statutes  reaches  back  in  unbroken  series  to  the 
Statutes  of  Edward.  The  routine  of  the  first  Henry,  the 


THE   CHARTEK.      1204 — 1291.  308 

administrative  changes  which  had  been  imposed  on  the 
nation  by  the  clear  head  and  imperious  will  of  the  second, 
were  transformed  under  Edward  into  a  political  organiza- 
tion with  carefully-defined  limits,  directed  not  by  the 
King's  will  alone  but  by  the  political  impulse  of  the 
people  at  large.  His  social  legislation  was  based  in  the 
same  fashion  on  principles  which  had  already  been  brought 
into  practical  working  by  Henry  the  Second.  It  was  no 
doubt  in  great  measure  owing  to  this  practical  sense  of 
its  financial  and  administrative  value  rather  than  to  any 
foresight  of  its  political  importance  that  we  owe  Edward's 
organization  of  our  Parliament.  But  if  the  institutions 
which  we  commonly  associate  with  his  name  owe  their 
origin  to  others,  they  owe  their  form  and  their  perpetuity 
to  him. 

The  King's  English  policy,  like  his  English  name,  was 
in  fact  the  sign  of  a  new  epoch.  England  was  made. 
The  long  period  of  national  formation  had  come  practi- 
cally to  an  end.  With  the  reign  of  Edward  begins  the 
constitutional  England  in  which  we  live.  It  is  not  that 
any  chasm  separates  our  history  before  it  from  our  his- 
tory after  it  as  the  chasm  of  the  Revolution  divides  the 
history  of  France,  for  we  have  traced  the  rudiments  of 
our  constitution  to  the  first  moment  of  the  English  set- 
tlement in  Britain.  But  it  is  with  these  as  with  our 
language.  The  tongue  of  Alfred  is  the  very  tongue  we 
speak,  but  in  spite  of  its  identity  with  modern  English  it 
has  to  be  learned  like  the  tongue  of  a  stranger.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  English  of  Chaucer  is  almost  as  intel- 
ligible as  our  own.  In  the  first  the  historian  and  phi- 
lologer  can  study  the  origin  and  development  of  our 
national  speech,  in  the  last  a  school-boy  can  enjoy  the 
story  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  or  listen  to  the  gay  chat  of 
the  Canterbury  Pilgrims.  In  precisely  the  same  way  a 
knowledge  of  our  earliest  laws  is  indispensable  for  the 
right  understanding  of  later  legislation,  its  origin  and 
its  development,  while  principles  of  our  Parliamentary 
system  must  necessarily  be  studied  in  the  meetings  of 
Wise  Men  before  the  Conquest  or  the  Great  Council  of 
barons  after  it.  But  the  Parliaments  which  Edward 


304  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

gathered  at  the  close  of  his  reign  are  not  merely  illustra- 
tive of  the  history  of  later  Parliaments,  they  are  abso- 
lutely identical  with  those  which  still  sit  at  St.  Stephen's. 
At  the  close  of  his  reign  King,  Lords,  Commons,  the 
Courts  of  Justice,  the  forms  of  public  administration,  the 
relations  of  Church  and  State,  all  local  divisions  and  pro- 
vincial jurisdictions,  in  great  measure  the  framework  of 
society  itself,  have  taken  the  shape  which  they  essentially 
retain.  In  a  word  the  long  struggle  of  the  constitution 
for  actual  existence  has  come  to  an  end.  The  contests 
which  follow  are  not  contests  that  tell,  like  those  that 
preceded  them,  on  the  actual  fabric  of  our  institutions  ; 
they  are  simply  stages  in  the  rough  discipline  by  which 
England  has  learned  and  is  still  learning  how  best  to  use 
and  how  wisely  to  develope  the  latent  powers  of  its  na- 
tional life,  how  to  adjust  the  balance  of  its  social  and 
political  forces,  how  to  adapt  its  constitutional  forms  to 
the  varying  conditions  of  the  time. 

The  news  of  his  father's  death  found  Edward  at  Capua 
in  the  opening  of  1273 ;  but  the  quiet  of  his  realm  under  a 
regency  of  which  Roger  Mortimer  was  the  practical  head 
left  him  free  to  move  slowly  homewards.  Two  of  his 
acts  while  thus  journeying  through  Italy  show  that  his 
mind  was  already  dwelling  on  the  state  of  English 
finance  and  of  English  law.  His  visit  to  the  Pope  at 
Orvieto  was  with  a  view  of  gaining  permission  to  levy 
from  the  clergy  a  tenth  of  their  income  for  the  three 
coming  years,  while  he  drew  from  Bologna  its  most  em- 
inent jurist,  Francesco  Accursi,  to  aid  in  the  task  of  legal 
reform.  At  Paris  he  did  homage  to  Philip  the  Third  for 
his  French  possessions,  and  then  turning  southward  he 
devoted  a  year  to  the  ordering  of  Gascony.  It  was  not 
till  the  summer  of  1274  that  the  King  reached  England. 
But  he  had  already  planned  the  work  he  had  to  do,  and 
the  measures  which  he  laid  before  the  Parliament  of  1275 
were  signs  of  the  spirit  in  which  he  was  to  set  about  it. 
The  First  Statute  of  Westminster  was  rather  a  code  than 
a  statute.  It  contained  no  less  than  fifty-one  clauses, 
and  was  an  attempt  to  summarize  a  number  of  previous 
enactments  contained  in  the  Great  Charter,  the  Pro- 


THE   CHARTER.       1204 1291.  305 

visions  of  Oxford,  and  the  Statute  of  Marlborough,  as  well 
as  to  embody  some  of  the  administrative  measures  of 
Henry  the  Second  and  his  son.  But  a  more  pressing 
need  than  that  of  a  codification  of  the  law  was  the  need 
of  a  reorganization  of  finance.  While  the  necessities  of 
the  Crown  was  growing  with  the  widening  of  its  range 
of  administrative  action,  the  revenues  of  the  Crown  ad- 
mitted of  no  corresponding  expansion.  In  the  earliest 
times  of  our  history  the  outgoings  of  the  Crown  were  as 
small  as  its  income.  All  local  expenses,  whether  for 
justice  or  road-making  or  fortress-building,  were  paid  by- 
local  funds  ;  and  the  national  "  fyrd  "  served  at  its  own 
cost  in  the  field.  The  produce  of  a  king's  private  estates 
with  the  provisions  due  to  him  from  the  public  lands 
scattered  over  each  county,  whether  gathered  by  the 
King  himself  as  he  moved  over  his  realm,  or  as  in  later 
days  fixed  at  a  stated  rate  and  collected  by  his  sheriff, 
were  sufficient  to  defray  the  mere  expenses  of  the  Court. 
The  Danish  wars  gave  the  first  shock  to  this  simple 
system.  To  raise  a  ransom  which  freed  the  land  from 
the  invader,  the  first  land-tax,  under  the  name  of  the 
Danegeld,  was  laid  on  every  hide  of  ground  ;  and  to  this 
national  taxation  the  Norman  kings  added  the  feudal 
burdens  of  the  new  military  estates  created  by  the  Con- 
quest, reliefs  paid  on  inheritance,  profits  of  marriages  and 
wardship,  and  the  three  feudal  aids.  But  foreign  warfare 
soon  exhausted  this  means  of  revenue ;  the  barons  and 
bishops  in  their  Great  Council  were  called  on  at  each 
emergency  for  a  grant  from  their  lands,  and  at  each  grant 
a  corresponding  demand  was  made  by  the  King  as  a 
landlord  on  the  towns,  as  lying  for  the  most  part  in  the 
royal  demesne.  The  cessation  of  Danegeld  under  Henry 
the  Second  and  his  levy  of  scutage  made  little  change  in 
the  general  incidence  of  taxation  ;  it  still  fell  wholly  on 
the  land,  for  even  the  townsmen  paid  as  holders  of  their 
tenements.  But  a  new  principle  of  taxation  was  dis- 
closed in  the  tithe  levied  for  a  Crusade  at  the  close  of 
Henry's  reign.  Land  was  no  longer  the  only  source  of 
wealth.  The  growth  of  national  prosperity,  of  trade 
and  commerce,  was  creating  a  mass  of  personal  property 

2D 


306  HISTORY   OP   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

which  offered  irresistible  temptations  to  the  Angevin 
financiers.  The  old  revenue  from  landed  property  was 
restricted  and  lessened  by  usage  and  compositions.  Scut- 
age  was  only  due  for  foreign  campaigns :  the  feudal  aids 
only  on  rare  and  stated  occasions  :  and  though  the  fines 
from  the  shire-courts  grew  with  the  growth  of  society 
the  dues  from  the  public  lands  were  fixed  and  incapable 
of  development.  But  no  usage  fettered  the  Crown  in 
dealing  with  personal  property,  and  its  growth  in  value 
promised  a  growing  revenue.  From  the  close  of  Henry 
the  Second's  reign  therefore  this  became  the  most  com- 
mon form  of  taxation.  Grants  of  from  a  seventh  to 
a  thirtieth  of  movables,  household-property,  and  stock 
were  demanded  ;  and  it  was  the  necessity  of  procuring 
their  assent  to  these  demands  which  enabled  the  baron- 
age through  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Third  to  bring  a 
financial  pressure  to  bear  on  the  Crown. 

But  in  addition  to  these  two  forms  of  direct  taxation 
indirect  taxation  also  was  coming  more  and  more  to  the 
front.  The  right  of  the  King  to  grant  licences  to  bring 
goods  into  or  to  trade  within  the  realm,  a  right  springing 
from  the  need  for  his  protection  felt  by  the  strangers  who 
came  there  for  purposes  of  traffic,  laid  the  foundation  of 
our  taxes  on  imports.  Those  on  exports  were  only  apart 
of  the  general  system  of  taxing  personal  property  which 
we  have  already  noticed.  How  tempting  this  source  of 
revenue  was  proving  we  see  from  a  provision  of  the  Great 
Charter  which  forbids  the  levy  of  more  than  the  ancient 
customs  on  merchants  entering  or  leaving  the  realm. 
Commerce  was  in  fact  growing  with  the  growing  wealth 
of  the  people.  The  crowd  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  build- 
ings which  date  from  this  period  shows  the  prosperity  of 
the  country.  Christian  architecture  reached  its  highest 
beauty  in  the  opening  of  Edward's  reign  ;  a  reign  marked 
by  the  completion  of  the  abbey  church  of  Westminster 
and  of  the  cathedral  church  at  Salisbury.  t  An  English 
noble  was  proud  to  be  styled  "  an  incomparable  builder," 
while  some  traces  of  the  art  which  was  rising  into  life 
across  the  Alps  flowed  in,  it  may  be,  with  the  Italian 
ecclesiastics  whom  the  Papacy  forced  on  the  English 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  807 

Church.     The  shrine  of  the  Confessor  at  Westminster, 
the  mosaic  pavement  beside  the  altar  of  the  abbey,  the 
paintings  on  the  walls  of  its  chapter-house  remind  us  of 
the  schools  which  were  springing  up  under  Giotto  and 
the   Pisans.      But  the   wealth  which  this  art  progress 
shows  drew  trade  to   English  shores.     England  was  as 
yet  simply  an  agricultural  country.     Gascony  sent  her 
wines  ;  her  linens  were  furnished  by  the  looms  of  Ghent 
and  Lidge  ;  Genoese  vessels  brought  to  her  fairs  the  silks, 
the  velvets,  the  glacs  of  Italy.     In  the  barks  of  the  Hanse 
merchants  came  fur  and  amber  from  the  Baltic,  herrings, 
pitch,  timber,  and  naval  stores  from  the  countries  of  the 
north.     Spain  sent  us  iron  and  war-horses.     Milan  sent 
armor.     The  great  Venetian  merchant-galleys   touched 
the  southern  coasts  and  left  in  our  ports  the  dates  of 
Egypt,  the  figs  and  currants  of  Greece,  the  silk  of  Sicily, 
the  sugar  of  Cyprus  and  Crete,  the  spices  of  the  Eastern 
seas.     Capital  too  came  from  abroad.     The  bankers  of 
Florence  and  Lucca  were  busy  with  loans  to  the  court 
or  vast  contracts  with  the  wool-growers.     The  bankers 
of  Cahors  had  already  dealt  a  death-blow  to  the  usury 
of  the  Jew.     Against  all  this  England  had  few  exports 
to  set.     The  lead  supplied  by  the  mines  of  Derbyshire, 
the  salt  of  the  Worcestershire  springs,  the  iron  of  the 
Weald,    were  almost  wholly   consumed  at  home.     The 
one  metal  export  of  any  worth  was  that  of  tin  iron  from 
the  tin  mines  of  Cornwall.     But  the  production  of  wool 
was  fast  becoming  a  main  element  of  the  nation's  wealth. 
Flanders,  the  great  manufacturing  country  of  the  time, 
lay  fronting  otir  eastern  coast ;  and  with  this  market 
close  at  hand  the  pastures  of  England  found  more  and 
more  profit  in  the  supply  of  wool.     The  Cistercian  order 
which  possessed  vast  ranges  of  moorland  in  Yorkshire  be- 
came famous  as  wool-growers  ;  and  their  wool  had  been 
seized  for  Richard's  ransom.     The  Florentine  merchants 
were  developing  this  trade  by  their  immense  contracts  ; 
we  find  a  single  company  of  merchants  contracting  for 
the  purchase  of  the  Cistercian  wool  throughout  the  year. 
It  was  after  counsel  with  the  Italian  bankers  that  Ed- 
ward devised  his  scheme  for  drawing  a  permanent  revenue 


808  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

from  this  source.  In  the  Parliament  of  1275  he  obtained 
the  grant  of  half  a  mark,  or  six  shillings  and  eightpence, 
on  each  sack  of  wool  exported ;  and  this  grant,  a  grant 
memorable  as  forming  the  first  legal  foundation  of  our 
customs-revenue,  at  once  relieved  the  necessities  of  the 
Crown. 

The  grant  of  the  wool  tax  enabled  Edward  in  fact  to 
deal  with  the  great  difficulty  of  his  realm.  The  troubles 
of  the  Barons'  war,  the  need  which  Earl  Simon  felt  of 
Llewelyn's  alliance  to  hold  in  check  the  Marcher-barons, 
had  all  but  shaken  off  from  Wales  the  last  traces  of  de- 
pendence. Even  at  the  close  of  the  war  the  threat  of  an  at- 
tack from  the  now  united  kingdom  only  forced  Llewelyn 
to  submission  on  a  practical  acknowledgment  of  his 
sovereignty.  Although  the  title  which  Llewelyn  ap 
Jorwerth  claimed  of  Prince  of  North  Wales  was  recog- 
nized by  the  English  court  in  the  earlier  days  of  Henry 
the  Third,  it  was  withdrawn  after  1229  and  its  claimant 
known  only  as  Prince  of  Aberffraw.  But  the  loftier  title 
of  Prince  of  Wales  which  Llewelyn  ap  Gryffydd  assumed 
in  1256  was  formally  conceded  to  him  in  1267,  and  his 
right  to  receive  homage  from  the  other  nobles  of  his 
principality  was  formally  sanctioned.  Near  however  as 
he  seemed  to  the  final  realization  of  his  aims,  Llewelyn 
was  still  a  vassal  of  the  English  crown,  and  the  accession 
of  Edward  to  the  throne  was  at  once  followed  by  the  de- 
mand of  homage.  But  the  summons  was  fruitless  ;  and 
the  next  two  years  were  wasted  in  as  fruitless  negotia- 
tion. The  kingdom  however  was  now  well  in  hand. 
The  royal  treasury  was  filled  again,  and  in  1277  Edward 
marched  on  North  Wales.  The  fabric  of  Welsh  great- 
ness fell  at  a  single  blow.  The  chieftains  who  had  so 
lately  sworn  fealty  to  Llewelyn  in  the  southern  and  cen- 
tral parts  of  the  country  deserted  him  to  join  his  Eng- 
lish enemies  in  their  attack ;  an  English  fleet  reduced 
Anglesea  ;  and  the  Prince  was  cooped  up  in  his  mountain 
fastnesses  and  forced  to  throw  himself  on  Edward's  mercy. 
With  characteristic  moderation  the  conqueror  contented 
himself  with  adding  to  the  English  dominions  the  coast- 
district  as  far  as  Conway  and  with  providing  that  the 


THE   CHABTEB.      1204 1291.  809 

title  of  Prince  of  Wales  should  cease  at  Llewelyn's  death. 
A  heavy  fine  which  he  had  incurred  by  his  refusal  to  do 
homage  was  remitted  ;  and  Eleanor,  a  daughter  of  Earl 
Simon  of  Montfort  whom  he  had  sought  as  his  wife  but 
who  had  been  arrested  on  her  way  to  him,  was  wedded  to 
the  Prince  at  Edward's  court. 

For  four  years  all  was  quiet  across  the  Welsh  Marches, 
and  Edward  was  able  again  to  turn  his  attention  to  the 
work  of  internal  reconstruction.  It  is  probably  to  this 
time,  certainly  to  the  earlier  years  of  his  reign,  that  we 
may  attribute  his  modification  of  our  judicial  system. 
The  King's  Court  was  divided  into  three  distinct  tribunals, 
the  Court  of  Exchequer  which  took  cognizance  of  all 
causes  in  which  the  royal  revenue  was  concerned ;  the 
Court  of  Common  Pleas  for  suits  between  private  per- 
sons ;  and  the  King's  Bench,  which  had  jurisdiction  in 
all  matters  that  affected  the  sovereign  as  well  as  in  "  pleas 
of  the  crown  "  or  criminal  causes  expressly  reserved  for 
his  decision.  Each  court  was  now  provided  with  a  dis- 
tinct staff  of  judges.  Of  yet  greater  importance  than 
this  change,  which  was  in  effect  but  the  completion  of  a 
process  of  severance  that  had  long  been  going  on,  was 
the  establishment  of  an  equitable  jurisdiction  side  by  side 
with  that  of  the  common  law.  In  his  reform  of  1178 
Henry  the  Second  broke  up  the  older  King's  Court,  which 
had  till  then  served  as  the  final  Court  of  Appeal,  by  the 
severance  of  the  purely  legal  judges  who  had  been  grad- 
ually added  to  it  from  the  general  body  of  his  councillors. 
The  judges  thus  severed  from  the  Council  retained  the 
name  and  the  ordinary  jurisdiction  of"  the  King's  Court," 
but  the  mere  fact  of  their  severance. changed  in  an  essen- 
tial way  the  character  of  the  justice  they  dispensed.  The 
King  in  Council  wielded  a  power  which  was  not  only 
judicial  but  executive ;  his  decisions  though  based  upon 
custom  were  not  fettered  by  it,  they  were  the  expressions 
of  his  will,  and  it  was  as  his  will  that  they  were  carried 
out  by  officers  of  the  Crown.  But  the  separate  bench  of 
judges  had  no  longer  this  unlimited  power  at  their  com- 
mand. They  had  not  the  King's  right  as  representative 
of  the  community  to  make  the  law  for  the  redress  of  a 


810  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

wrong.  They  professed  simply  to  declare  what  the  ex- 
isting law  was,  even  if  it  was  insufficient  for  the  full  pur- 
pose of  redress.  The  authority  of  their  decision  rested 
mainly  on  their  adhesion  to  ancient  custom  or  as  it  was 
styled  the  "  common  law  "  which  had  grown  up  in  the 
past.  They  could  enforce  their  decisions  only  by  direc- 
tions to  an  independent  officer,  the  sheriff,  and  here  again 
their  right  was  soon  rigidly  bounded  by  set  form  and 
custom.  These  bonds  in  fact  became  tighter  every  day, 
for  their  decisions  were  now  beginning  to  be  reported,  and 
the  cases  decided  by  one  bench  of  judges  became  authori- 
ties for  their  successors.  It  is  plain  that  such  a  state 
of  things  has  the  utmost  value  in  many  ways,  whether  in 
creating  in  men's  minds  that  impersonal  notion  of  a  sov- 
ereign lawwhich  exercises  its  imaginative  force  on  human 
action,  or  in  furnishing  by  the  accumulation  and  sacred- 
ness  of  precedents  a  barrier  against  the  invasion  of  arbi- 
trary power.  But  it  threw  a  terrible  obstacle  in  the  way 
of  the  actual  redress  of  wrong.  The  increasing  complexity 
of  human  action  as  civilization  advanced  outstripped  the 
efforts  of  the  law.  Sometimes  ancient  custom  furnished 
no  redress  for  a  wrong  which  sprang  from  modern  circum- 
stances. Sometimes  the  very  pedantry  and  inflexibility 
of  the  law  itself  became  in  individual  cases  the  highest 
injustice. 

It  was  the  consciousness  of  this  that  made  men  cling 
even  from  the  first  moment  of  the  independent  existence 
of  these  courts  to  the  judicial  power  which  still  remained* 
inherent  in  the  Crown  itself.  If  his  courts  fell  short  in 
any  matter  the  duty  of  the  King  to  do  justice  to  all  still 
remained,  and  it  was  this  obligation  which  was  recog- 
nized in  the  provision  of  Henry  the  Second  by  which  all 
cases  in  which  his  judges  failed  to  do  justice  were  re- 
served for  the  special  cognizance  of  the  royal  Council 
itself.  To  this  final  jurisdiction  of  the  King  in  Council 
Edward  gave  a  wide  development.  His  assembly  of  the 
ministers,  the  higher  permanent  officials,  and  the  law 
officers  of  the  Crown  for  the  first  time  reserved  to  itself 
in  its  judicial  capacity  the  correction  of  all  breaches  of 
the  law  which  the  lower  courts  had  failed  to  repress, 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  311 

whether  from  weakness,  partiality,  or  corruption,  and 
especially  of  those  lawless  outbreaks  of  the  more  power- 
ful baronage  which  defied  the  common  authority  of  the 
judges.  Such  powers  were  of  course  capable  of  terrible 
abuse,  and  it  shows  what  real  need  there  was  felt  to  be 
for  their  exercise  that  though  regarded  with  jealousy  by 
Parliament  the  jurisdiction  of  the  royal  Council  appears 
to  have  been  steadily  put  into  force  through  the  two 
centuries  which  followed.  In  the  reign  of  Henry  the 
Seventh  it  took  legal  and  statutory  form  in  the  shape  of 
the  Court  of  Star  Chamber,  and  its  powers  are  still  ex- 
ercised in  our  own  day  by  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the 
Privy  Council.  But  the  same  duty  of  the  Crown  to  do 
justice  where  its  courts  fell  short  of  giving  due  redress 
for  wrong  expressed  itself  in  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Chancellor.  This  great  officer  of  State,  who  had  perhaps 
originally  acted  only  as  President  of  the  Council  when 
discharging  its  judicial  functions,  acquired  at  a  .very 
early  date  an  independent  judicial  position  of  the  same 
nature.  It  is  by  remembering  this  origin  of  the  Court  of 
Chancery  that  we  understand  the  nature  of  ohe  powers 
it  gradually  acquired.  All  grievances  of  the  subject, 
especially  those  which  sprang  from  the  misconduct  of 
government  officials  or  of  powerful  oppressors,  fell  within 
its  cognizance  as  they  fell  within  that  of  the  Royal 
Council,  and  to  these  were  added  disputes  respecting  the 
wardship  of  infants,  dower,  rent-charges,  or  tithes.  Its 
equitable  jurisdiction  sprang  from  the  defective  nature 
and  the  technical  and  unbending  rules  of  the  common 
law.  As  the  Council  had  given  redress  in  cases  where 
law  became  injustice,  so  the  Court  of  Chancery  interfered 
without  regard  to  the  rules  of  procedure  adopted  by  the 
common  law  courts  on  the  petition  of  a  party  for  whose 
grievance  the  common  law  provided  no  adequate  remedy. 
An  analogous  extension  of  his  powers  enabled  the  Chan- 
cellor to  afford  relief  in  cases  of  fraud,  accident,  or  abuse 
of  trust,  and  this  side  of  his  jurisdiction  was  largely  ex- 
tended at  a  later  time  by  the  results  of  legislation  on  the 
tenure  of  land  by  ecclesiastical  bodies.  The  separate 
powers  of  the  Chancellor,  whatever  was  the  original  date 


812  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

at  which  they  were  first  exercised,  seem  to  have  been 
thoroughly  established  under  Edward  the  First. 

What  reconciled  the  nation  to  the  exercise  of  powers 
such  as  these  by  the  Crown  and  its  council  was  the  need 
which  was  still  to  exist  for  centuries  of  an  effective  means 
of  bringing  the  baronage  within  the  reach  of  the  law. 
Constitutionally  the  position  of  the  English  nobles  had 
now  become  established.  A  King  could  no  longer  make 
laws  or  levy  taxes  or  even  make  war  without  their  assent. 
The  nation  reposed  in  them  an  unwavering  trust,  for 
they  were  no  longer  the  brutal  foreigners  from  whose 
violence  the  strong  hand  of  a  Norman  ruler  had  been 
needed  to  protect  his  subjects  ;  they  were  as  English  as 
the  peasant  or  the  trader.  They  had  won  English  liberty 
by  their  swords,  and  the  tradition  of  their  order  bound 
them  to  look  on  themselves  as  its  natural  guardians.  The 
close  of  the  Barons'  War  solved  the  problem  which  had 
so  long  troubled  the  realm,  the  problem  how  to  ensure  the 
government  of  the  realm  in  accordance  with  the  provisions 
of  the  Great  Charter,  by  the  transfer  of  the  business  of 
administration  into  the  hands  of  a  standing  committee 
of  the  greater  barons  and  prelates,  acting  as  chief  officers 
of  state  in  conjunction  with  specially  appointed  ministers 
of  the  Crown.  The  body  thus  composed  was  known  as 
the  Continual  Council;  and  the  quiet  government  of  the 
kingdom  by  this  body  in  the  long  interval  between  the 
death  of  Henry  the  Third  and  his  son's  return  shows 
how  effective  this  rule  of  the  nobles  was.  It  is  signifi- 
cant of  the  new  relation  which  they  were  to  «trivc  to 
establish  between  themselves  and  the  Crown  that  in  the 
brief  which  announced  Edward's  accession  the  Council 
asserted  that  the  new  monarch  mounted  his  tin-one  "by 
the  will  of  the  peers."  But  while  the  political  influence 
of  the  baronage  as  a  leading  element  in  the  whole  nation 
thus  steadily  mounted,  the  personal  and  purely  feudal 
power  of  each  individual  baron  on  his  own  estates  as 
steadily  fell.  The  hold  which  the  Crown  gained  on 
every  noble  family  by  its  rights  of  wardship  and  marriage, 
the  circuits  of  the  royal  judges,  the  ever  narrowing 
bounds  within  which  baronial  justice  saw  itself  circum- 


THE   CHAETER.      1201 — 1291.  818 

scribed,  the  blow  dealt  by  scutage  at  their  military  power, 
the  prompt  intervention  of  the  Council  in  their  feuds, 
lowered  the  nobles  more  and  more  to  the  common  level 
of  their  fellow  subjects.  Much  yet  remained  to  be  done  ; 
for  within  the  general  body  of  the  baronage  there  existed 
side  by  side  with  the  nobles  whose  aims  were  purely  na- 
tional nobles  who  saw  in  the  overthrow  of  the  royal 
despotism  simply  a  chance  of  setting  up  again  their  feu- 
dal privileges  ;  and  different  as  the  English  baronage, 
taken  as  a  whole,  was  from  a  feudal  noblesse  like  that  of 
Germany  or  France  there  is  in  every  military  class  a 
natural  drift  towards  violence  and  lawlessness.  Through- 
out Edward's  reign  his  strong  hand  was  needed  to  enforce 
order  on  warring  nobles.  Great  earls,  such  as  those  of 
Gloucester  and  Hereford,  carried  on  private  war ;  in 
Shropshire  the  Earl  of  Arundel  waged  his  feud  with 
Fulk  Fitz  Warine.  To  the  lesser  and  poorer  nobles  the 
wealth  of  the  trader,  the  long  train  of  goods  as  it 
passed  along  the  highway,  remained  a  tempting  prey. 
Once,  under  cover  of  a  mock  tournament  of  monks 
against  canons,  a  band  of  country  gentlemen  succeeded 
in  introducing  themselves  into  the  great  merchant  fair 
at  Boston  ;  at  nightfall  every  booth  was  on  fire,  the 
merchants  robbed  and  slaughtered,  and  the  booty  car- 
ried off  to  ships  which  lay  ready  at  the  quay.  Streams 
of  gold  and  silver,  ran  the  tale  of  popular  horror, 
flowed  melted  down  the  gutters  to  the  sea ;  "  all  the 
money  in  England  could  hardly  make  good  the  loss." 
Even  at  the  close  of  Edward's  reign  lawless  bands  of 
"  trail-bastons,"  or  club-men,  maintained  themselves  by 
general  outrage,  aided  the  country  nobles  in  their  feuds, 
and  wrested  money  and  goods  from  the  great  trades- 
men. 

The  King  was  strong  enough  to  face  and  imprison  the 
warring  earls,  to  hang  the  chiefs  of  the  Boston  maraud- 
ers, and  to  suppress  the  outlaws  by  rigorous  commis- 
sions. But  the  repression  of  baronial  outrage  was  only 
a  part  of  Edward's  policy  in  relation  to  the  Baronage. 
Here,  as  elsewhere  he  had  to  carry  out  the  political 
policy  of  his  house,  a  policy  defined  by  the  great  meas- 


814  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ures  of  Henry  the  Second,  his  institution  of  scutage,  his 
general  assize  of  arms,  his  extension  of  the  itinerant 
judicature  of  the  royal  judges.  Forced  by  the  first  to  an 
exact  discharge  of  their  military  duties  to  the  Crown,  set 
by  the  second  in  the  midst  of  a  people  trained  equally 
with  the  nobles  to  arms,  their  judicial  tyranny  curbed 
and  subjected  to  the  King's  justice  by  the  third,  the 
barons  had  been  forced  from  their  old  standpoint  of  an 
isolated  class  to  the  new  and  nobler  position  of  a  people's 
leaders.  Edward  watched  jealously  over  the  ground 
which  the  Crown  had  gained.  Immediately  after  his 
landing  he  appointed  a  commission  of  inquiry  into  the 
judicial  franchises  then  existing,  and  on  its  report  (of 
which  the  existing  "  Hundred-Rolls "  are  the  result) 
itinerant  justices  were  sent  in  1278  to  discover  by  what 
right  these  franchises  were  held.  The  writs  of  "  quo 
warranto "  were  roughly  met  here  and  there.  Earl 
Warenne  bared  a  rusty  sword  and  flung  it  on  the  jus- 
tices' table.  "  This,  sirs,"  he  said,  "  is  my  warrant.  By 
the  sword  our  fathers  won  their  lands  when  they  came 
over  with  the  Conqueror,  and  by  the  sword  we  will  keep 
them."  But  the  King  was  far  from  limiting  himself  to 
the  mere  carrying  out  of  the  plans  of  Henry  the  Second. 
Henry  had  aimed  simply  at  lowering  the  power  of  the 
great  feudatories ;  Edward  aimed  rather  at  neutralizing 
their  power  by  raising  the  whole  body  of  landowners  to 
the  same  level.  We  shall  see  at  a  later  time  the  meas- 
ures which  were  the  issues  of  this  policy,  but  in  the  very 
opening  of  his  reign  a  significant  step  pointed  to  the 
King's  drift.  In  the  summer  of  1278  a  royal  writ  ordered 
all  freeholders  who  held  lands  to  the  value  of  twenty 
pounds  to  receive  knighthood  at  the  King's  hands. 

Acts  as  significant  announced  Edward's  purpose  of 
carrying  out  another  side  of  Henry's  policy,  that  of 
limiting  in  the  same  way  the  independent  jurisdiction 
of  the  Church.  He  was  resolute  to  force  it  to  become 
thoroughly  national  by  bearing  its  due  part  of  the  com- 
mon national  burdens,  and  to  break  its  growing  depend- 
ence upon  Rome.  But  the  ecclesiastical  body  was  jeal- 
ous of  its  position  as  a  power  distinct  from  the  power  of 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  315 

the  Crown,  and  Edward's  policy  had  hardly  declared 
itself  when  in    1279   Archbishop   Peckham  obtained  a 
canon  from  the   clergy  by  which   copies  of  the  Great 
Charter,  with  its  provisions  in  favor  of  the  liberties  of 
the  Church,  were  to  be  affixed  to  the  doors  of  churches. 
The  step  was  meant  as  a  defiant  protest  against  all  inter- 
ference, and  it  was  promptly  forbidden.    An  order  issued 
by  the  Primate  to  the  clergy  to  declare  to  their  flocks 
the  sentences  of  excommunication  directed  against  all 
who  obtained  royal  writs  to   obstruct  suits  in  church 
courts,  or  who,  whether  royal   officers  or  no,  neglected 
to  enforce  their  sentences,  was   answered  in  a  yet  more 
emphatic   way.     By  falling  into   the  "  dead  hand "  or 
"  mortmain  "  of  the  Church  land  ceased  to  render  its 
feudal  services ;  and  in  1279  the  Statute  "  de  Religiosis," 
or  as  it  is  commonly  called  "  of  Mortmain,"  forbade  any 
further   alienation  of  land  to   religious   bodies  in  such 
wise  that  it  should  cease  to  render  its  due  service  to  the 
King.    The  restriction  was  probably  no  beneficial  one  to 
the  country  at  large,  for  Churchmen  were  the  best  land- 
lords, and  it  was  soon   evaded  by  the  ingenuity  of  the 
clerical  lawyers  ;  but  it  marked  the  growing  jealousy  of 
any  attempt  to  set  aside  what  was  national  from  serving 
the  general  need  and  profit  of  the  nation.    Its  immediate 
effect  was  to  stir  the  clergy  to  a  bitter  resentment.     But 
Edward  remained  firm,  and  when  the  bishops  proposed 
to  restrict  the  royal  courts   from  dealing  with  cases  of 
patronage    or   causes    which    touched   the    chattels   of 
Churchmen  he  met  their  proposals  by  an  instant  pro- 
hibition. 

The  resentment  of  the  clergy  had  soon  the  means  of 
showing  itself  during  a  new  struggle  with  Wales.  The 
persuasions  of  his  brother  David,  who  had  deserted  him 
in  the  previous  war,  but  who  deemed  his  desertion  in- 
sufficiently rewarded  by  an  English  lordship,  roused 
Llewelyn  to  a  fresh  revolt.  A  prophecy  of  Merlin  was 
said  to  promise  that  when  English  money  became  round 
a  Prince  of  Wales  should  be  crowned  in  London  ;  and 
at  this  moment  a  new  coinage  of  copper  money,  coupled 
with  a  prohibition  to  break  the  silver  penny  into  halves 


816  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

and  quarters,  as  had  been  commonly  done,  was  supposed 
to  fulfil  the  prediction.  In  1282  Edward  marched  in 
overpowering  strength  into  the  heart  of  Wales.  But 
Llewelyn  held  out  in  Snowdon  with  the  stubbornness  of 
despair,  and  the  rout  of  an  English  force  which  had 
crossed  into  Anglesea  prolonged  the  contest  into  the 
winter.  The  cost  of  the  war  fell  on  the  King's  treasury. 
Edward  had  called  for  but  one  general  grant  through  the 
past  eight  years  of  his  reign  ;  but  he  was  now  forced  to 
appeal  to  his  people,  and  by  an  expedient  hitherto  with- 
out precedent  two  provincial  Councils  were  called  for 
this  purpose.  That  for  Southern  England  met  at  North- 
ampton, that  for  Northern  at  York  ;  and  clergy  and  laity 
were  summoned,  though  in  separate  session,  to  both. 
Two  knights  came  from  every  shire,  two  burgesses  from 
every  borough,  while  the  bishops  brought  their  arch- 
deacons, abbots,  and  the  proctors  of  their  cathedral 
clergy.  The  grant  of  the  laity  was  quick  and  liberal. 
But  both  at  York  and  Northampton  the  clergy  showed 
their  grudge  at  Edward's  measures  by  long  delays  in 
supplying  his  treasury.  Pinched  however  as  were  his 
resources,  and  terrible  as  were  the  sufferings  of  his  army 
through  the  winter,  Edward's  firmness  remained  un- 
broken ;  and  rejecting  all  suggestions  of  retreat  he  is- 
sued orders  for  the  formation  of  a  new  army  at  Caer- 
marthen  to  complete  the  circle  of  investment  round 
Llewelyn.  But  the  war  came  suddenly  to  an  end.  The 
Prince  sallied  from  his  mountain  hold  for  a  raid  upon 
Radnorshire  and  fell  in  a  petty  skirmish  on  the  banks  of 
the  Wye.  With  him  died  the  independence  of  his  race. 
After  six  months  of  flight  his  brother  David  was  made 
prisoner  ;  and  a  Parliament  summoned  at  Shrewsbury  in 
the  autumn  of  1283,  to  which  each  county  again  sent  its 
two  knights  and  twenty  boroughs  their  two  burgesses, 
sentenced  him  to  a  traitor's  death.  The  submission  of 
the  lesser  chieftains  soon  followed :  and  the  country  was 
secured  by  the  building  of  strong  castles  at  Con  way  and 
Caernarvon,  and  the  settlement  of  English  barons  on  the 
confiscated  soil.  The  Statute  of  Wales  which  Edward 
promulgated  at  Rhuddlan  in  1284  proposed  to  introduce 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 — 1291.  817 

English  law  and  the  English  administration  of  justice 
and  government  into  Wales.  But  little  came  of  the 
attempt;  and  it  was  not  till  the  time  of  Henry  the 
Eighth  that  the  country  was  actually  incorporated  with 
England  and  represented  in  the  English  Parliament. 
What  Edward  had  really  done  was  to  break  the  Welsh 
resistance.  The  policy  with  which  he  followed  up  his 
victory  (for  the  "  massacre  of  the  bards  "  is  a  mere  fable) 
accomplished  its  end ;  and  though  two  later  rebellions 
and  a  ceaseless  strife  of  the  natives  with  the  English 
towns  in  their  midst  showed  that  the  country  was  still 
far  from  being  reconciled  to  its  conquest,  it  ceased  to  be 
any  serious  danger  to  England  for  a  hundred  years. 

From  the  work  of  conquest  Edward  again  turned  to 
the  work  of  legislation.  In  the  midst  of  his  struggle 
with  Wales  he  had  shown  his  care  for  the  commercial 
classes  by  a  Statute  of  Merchants  in  1283,  which  pro- 
vided for  the  registration  of  the  debts  of  traders  and  for 
their  recovery  by  distraint  of  the  debtor's  goods  and  the 
imprisonment  of  his  person.  The  close  of  the  war  saw 
two  measures  of  even  greater  importance.  The  second 
Statute  of  Westminster  which  appeared  in  1285  is  a  code 
of  the  same  sort  as  the  first,  amending  the  Statutes  of 
Mortmain,  of  Merton,  and  of  Gloucester  as  well  as  the 
laws  of  dower  and  advowson,  remodelling  the  system  of 
justices  of  assize,  and  curbing  the  abuses  of  manorial 
jurisdiction.  In  the  same  year  appeared  the  greatest  of 
Edward's  measures  for  the  enforcement  of  public  order. 
The  Statute  of  Winchester  revived  and  reorganized  the 
old  institutions  of  national  police  and  national  defence. 
It  regulated  the  action  of  the  hundred,  the  duty  of 
watch  and  ward,  and  the  gathering  of  the  fyrd  or  mili- 
tia of  the  realm  as  Henry  the  Second  had  moulded  it 
into  form  in  his  Assize  of  Arms.  Every  man  was  bound 
to  hold  himself  in  readiness,  duly  armed,  for  the  King's 
service  in  case  of  invasion  or  revolt,  and  to  pursue  felons 
when  hue  and  cry  were  made  after  them.  Every  district 
was  held  responsible  for  crimes  committed  within  its 
bounds ;  the  gates  of  each  town  were  to  be  shut  at 
nightfall ,  and  all  strangers  were  required  to  give  an  ac- 


818  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

count  of  themselves  to  the  magistrates  of  any  borough 
which  they  entered.  By  a  provision  which  illustrates 
at  once  the  social  and  physical  condition  of  the  country 
at  the  time,  all  brushwood  was  ordered  to  be  destroyed 
within  a  space  of  two  hundred  feet  on  either  side  of  the 
public  highway  as  a  security  for  travellers  against  sudden 
attacks  from  robbers.  To  enforce  the  observance  of  this 
act  knights  were  appointed  in  every  shire  under  the  name 
of  Conservators  of  the  Peace,  a  name  which  as  the  benefit 
of  these  local  magistrates  was  more  sensibly  felt  and 
their  powers  were  more  largely  extended  was  changed 
into  that  which  they  still  retain  of  Justices  of  the  Peace. 
So  orderly  however  was  the  realm  that  Edward  was  able, 
in  1286,  to  pass  over  sea  to  his  foreign  dominions,  and. to 
spend  the  next  three  years  in  reforming  their  govern- 
ment. But  the  want  of  his  guiding  hand  was  at  last 
felt :  and  the  Parliament  of  1289  refused  a  new  tax  till 
the  King  came  homo  again. 

He  returned  to  find  the  Earl  of  Gloucester  and  Here- 
ford at  war,  and  his  judges  charged  with  violence  and 
corruption.  The  two  Earls  were  brought  to  peace,  and 
Earl  Gilbert  allied  closely  to  the  royal  house  by  a  mar- 
riage with  the  King's  daughter  Johanna.  After  a  care- 
ful investigation  the  judicial  abuses  were  recognized  and 
amended.  Two  of  the  chief  justices  were  banished  from 
the  realm  and  their  colleagues  imprisoned  and  fined. 
But  these  administrative  measures  were  only  preludes  to 
a  great  legislative  act  which  appeared  in  1290.  The 
Third  Statute  of  Westminster,  or,  to  use  the  name  by 
which  it  is  more  commonly  known,  the  Statute  "  Quia 
Emptores,"  is  one  of  those  legislative  efforts  which  mark 
the  progress  of  a  wide  social  revolution  in  the  country  at 
large.  The  number  of  the  greater  barons  was  diminish- 
ing every  day,  while  the  number  of  the  country  gentry 
and  of  the  more  substantial  yeomanry  was  increasing 
with  the  increase  of  the  national  wealth.  The  increase 
showed  itself  in  a  growing  desire  to  become  proprietors 
of  land.  Tenants  of  the  barons  received  under-tenants 
on  condition  of  their  rendering  them  similar  services  to 
those  which  they  themselves  rendered  to  their  lords  ; 


THE    CHARTER.     1204 — 1291.  319 

and  the  baronage,  while  duly  receiving  the  services  in 
compensation  for  which  they  had  originally  granted  their 
lands  in  fee,  saw  with  jealousy  the  feudal  profits  of  these 
new  under-tenants,  the  profits  of  wardships  or  of  reliefs 
and  the  like,  in  a  word  the  whole  increase  in  the  value 
of  the  estate  consequent  on  its  subdivision  and  higher 
cultivation  passing  into  other  hands  than  their  own. 
The  purpose  of  the  statute  "  Quia  Emptores "  was  to 
check  this  process  by  providing  that  in  any  case  of  alien- 
ation the  sub-tenant  should  henceforth  hold,  not  of  the 
tenant,  but  directly  of  the  superior  lord.  But  its  result 
was  to  promote  instead  of  hindering  the  transfer  and 
subdivision  of  land.  The  tenant  who  was  compelled 
before  the  passing  of  the  statute  to  retain  in  any  case  so 
much  of  the  estate  as  enabled  him  to  discharge  his  feudal 
services  to  the  overlord  of  whom  he  held  it,  was  now- 
enabled  by  a  process  analogous  to  the  modern  sale  of 
"  tenant-right,"  to  transfer  both  land  and  services  to  new 
holders.  However  small  the  estates  thus  created  might 
be,  the  bulk  were  held  directly  of  the  Crown ;  and  this 
class  of  lesser  gentry  and  freeholders  grew  steadily  from 
this  time  in  numbers  and  importance. 

The  year  which  saw  "Quia  Emptores  "  saw  a  step  which 
remains  the  great  blot  upon  Edward's  reign.  The  work 
abroad  had  exhausted  the  royal  treasury,  and  he  bought 
a  grant  from  his  Parliament  by  listening  to  their,  wishes 
in  the  matter  of  the  Jews.  Jewish  traders  had  followed 
William  the  Conqueror  from  Normandy,  and  had  been 
enabled  by  his  protection  to  establish  themselves  in 
separate  quarters  or  "  Jewries  "  in  all  larger  English 
towns.  The  Jew  had  no  right  or  citizenship  in  the  land. 
The  Jewry  in  which  he  lived  was  exempt  from  the  com- 
mon law.  He  was  simply  the  King's  chattel,  and  his 
life  and  goods  were  at  the  King's  mercy.  But  he  was 
too  valuable  a.  possession  to  be  lightly  thrown  away.  If 
the  Jewish  merchant  had  no  standing-ground  in  the  local 
court  the  king  enabled  him  to  sue  before  a  special  jus- 
ticiar  ;  his  bonds  were  deposited  for  safety  in  a  chamber 
of  the  royal  palace  at  Westminster  ;  he  was  protected 
against  the  popular  hatred  in  the  free  exercise  of  his  re- 


820  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ligion,  and  allowed  to  build  synagogues  and  to  manage 
his  own  ecclesiastical  affairs  by  means  of  a  chief  rabbi. 
The  royal  protection  was  dictated  by  no  spirit  of  toler- 
ance or  mercy.  To  the  kings  the  Jew  was  a  mere  engine 
of  finance.  The  wealth  which  he  accumulated  was 
wrung  from  him  whenever  the  crown  had  need,  and  tor- 
ture and  imprisonment  were  resorted  to  when  milder 
means  failed.  It  was  the  gold  of  the  Jew  that  rilled  the 
royal  treasury  at  the  outbreak  of  war  or  of  revolt.  It 
was  in  the  Hebrew  coffers  that  the  foreign  kings  found 
strength  to  hold  their  baronage  at  bay. 

That  the  presence  of  the  Jew  was,  at  least  in  the 
earlier  years  of  his  settlement,  beneficial  to  the  nation  at; 
large  there  can  be  little  doubt.  His  arrival  was  the  ar- 
rival of  a  capitalist ;  and  heavy  as  was  the  usury  he 
necessarily  exacted  in  the  general  insecurity  of  the  time, 
his  loans  gave  an  impulse  to  industry.  The  century 
which  followed  the  Conquest  witnessed  an  outburst  of 
architectural  energy  which  covered  the  land  with  castles 
and  cathedrals ;  but  castle  and  cathedral  alike  owed 
their  erection  to  the  loans  of  the  Jew.  His  own  example 
gave  a  new  vigor  to  domestic  architecture.  The  build- 
ings which  as  at  Lincoln  and  Bury  St.  Edmund's  still 
retain  their  name  of  "  Jews'  Houses,"  were  almost  the 
first  houses  of  stone  which  superseded  the  mere  hovels 
of  the  English  burghers.  Nor  was  their  influence  simply 
industrial.  Through  their  connexion  with  the  Jewish 
schools  in  Spain  and  the  East  the}r  opened  a  way  for 
the  revival  of  physical  sciences.  A  Jewish  medical  school 
seems  to  have  existed  at  Oxford  ;  Roger  Bacon  himself 
studied  under  English  rabbis.  But  the  general  progress 
of  civilization  now  drew  little  help  from  the  Jew,  while 
the  coming  of  the  Cahorsine  and  Italian  bankers  drove 
him  from  the  field  of  commercial  finance.  He  fell  back  on 
the  petty  usury  of  loans  to  the  poor,  a  trade  necessarily 
accompanied  with  much  of  extortion  and  which  roused 
into  fiercer  life  the  religious  hatred  against  their  race. 
Wild  stories  floated  about  of  children  carried  off  to  be 
circumcised  or  crucified,  and  a  Lincoln  boy  who  was 
found  slain  in  a  Jewish  house  was  canonized  by  popular 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 1291.  321 

reverence  as  "  St.  Hugh."  The  first  work  of  the  Friars 
was  to  settle  in  the  Jewish  quarters  and  attempt  their 
conversion,  but  the  popular  fury  rose  too  fast  for  these 
gentler  means  of  reconciliation.  When  the  Franciscans 
saved  seventy  Jews  from  hanging  by  their  prayer  to 
Henry  the  Third  the  populace  angrily  refused  the  breth- 
ren alms. 

But  all  this  growing  hate  was  met  with  a  bold  de- 
fiance. The  picture  which  is  commonly  drawn  of  the 
Jew  as  timid,  silent,  crouching  under  oppression,  how- 
ever truly  it  may  represent  the  general  position  of  his 
race  throughout  mediaeval  Europe,  is  far  from  being  borne 
out  by  historical  fact  on  this  side  the  Channel.  In  Eng- 
land the  attitude  of  the  Jew,  almost  to  the  very  end, 
was  an  attitude  of  proud  and  even  insolent  defiance. 
He  knew  that  the  royal  policy  exempted  him  from  the 
common  taxation,  the  common  justice,  the  common  obli- 
gations of  Englishmen.  Usurer,  extortioner  as  the  realm 
held  him  to  be,  the  royal  justice  would  secure  him  the 
repayment  of  his  bonds.  A  royal  commission  visited 
with  heavy  penalties  any  outbreak  of  violence  against 
the  King's  "  chattels."  The  Red  King  actually  forbade 
the  conversion  of  a  Jew  to  the  Christian  faith  ;  it  was  a 
poor  exchange,  he  said,  that  would  rid  him  of  a  valuable 
property  and  give  him  only  a  subject.  We  see  in  such  a 
case  as  that  of  Oxford  the  insolence  that  grew  out  of  this 
consciousness  of  the  royal  protection.  Here  as  elsewhere 
the  Jewry  was  a  town  within  a  town,  with  its  own  lan- 
guage, its  own  religion  and  law,  its  peculiar  commerce, 
its  peculiar  dress.  No  city  bailiff  could  penetrate  into 
the  square  of  little  alleys  which  lay  behind  the  present 
Town  Hall ;  the  Church  itself  was  powerless  to  prevent 
a  synagogue  from  rising  in  haughty  rivalry  over  against 
the  cloister  of  St.  Frideswide.  Prior  Philip  of  St.  Frides- 
wide  complains  bitterly  of  a  certain  Hebrew  who  stood 
at  his  door  as  the  procession  of  the  saint  passed  by,  mock- 
ing at  the  miracles  which  were  said  to  be  wrought  at  her 
shrine.  Halting  and  then  walking  firmly  on  his  feet, 
showing  his  hands  clenched  as  if  with  palsy  and  then 
flinging  open  his  fingers,  the  Jew  claimed  gifts  and  obla- 


822  HISTOKY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

tions  from  the  crowd  that  flocked  to  St.  Frideswide's 
shrine  on  the  ground  that  such  recoveries  of  life  and  limb 
were  quite  as  real  as  any  that  Frideswide  ever  wrought. 
Sickness  and  death  in  the  prior's  story  avenge  the  saint 
on  her  blasphemer,  but  no  earthly  power,  ecclesiastical 
or  civil,  seems  to  have  ventured  to  deal  with  him.  A 
more  daring  act  of  fanaticism  showed  the  temper  of  the 
Jews  even  at  the  close  of  Henry  the  Third's  reign.  As 
the  usual  procession  of  scholars  and  citizens  returned  from 
St.  Frideswide's  on  the  Ascension  Day  of  1268  a  Jew 
suddenly  burst  from  a  group  of  his  comrades  in  front  of 
the  synagogue,  and  wrenching  the  crucifix  from  its  bearer 
trod  it  under  foot.  But  even  in  presence  of  such  an  out- 
rage as  this  the  terror  of  the  Crown  sheltered  the  Oxford 
Jews  from  any  burst  of  popular  vengeance.  The  sentence 
of  the  King  condemned  them  to  set  up  a  cross  of  marble 
on  the  spot  where  the  crime  was  committed,  but  even 
this  sentence  was  in  part  remitted,  and  a  less  offensive 
place  was  found  for  the  cross  in  an  open  plot  by  Merton 
College. 

Up  to  Edward's  day  indeed  the  royal  protection  had 
never  wavered.  Henry  the  Second  granted  the  Jews  a 
right  of  burial  outside  every  city  where  they  dwelt. 
Richard  punished  heavily  a  massacre  of  the  Jews  at  York, 
and  organized  a  mixed  court  of  Jews  and  Christians  for 
the  registration  of  their  contracts.  John  suffered  none  to 
plunder  them  save  himself,  thougli  he  once  wrested  from 
them  a  sum  equal  to  a  year's  revenue  of  his  realm.  The 
troubles  of  the  next  reign  brought  in  a  harvest  greater 
than  even  the  royal  greed  could  reap ;  the  Jews  grew 
wealthy  enough  to  acquire  estates  ;  and  only  a  burst  of 
popular  feeling  prevented  a  legal  decision  which  would 
have  enabled  them  to  own  freeholds.  But  the  sack  of 
Jewry  after  Jewry  showed  the  popular  hatred  during  the 
Barons'  war,  and  at  its  close  fell  on  the  Jews  the  more 
terrible  persecution  of  the  law.  To  the  cry  against  usury 
and  the  religious  fanaticism  which  threatened  them  was 
now  added  the  jealousy  with  which  the  nation  that  had 
grown  up  round  the  Charter  regarded  all  exceptional 
.jurisdictions  or  exemptions  from  the  common  law  and  the 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 1291.  828 

common  burdens  of  the  realm.  As  Edward  looked  on 
the  privileges  of  the  Church  or  the  baronage,  so  his  people 
looked  on  the  privileges  of  the  Jews.  The  growing 
weight  of  the  Parliament  told  against  them.  Statute  after 
statute  hemmed  them  in.  They  were  forbidden  to  hold 
real  property,  to  employ  Christian  servants,  to  move 
through  the  streets  without  the  two  white  tablets  of  wool 
on  their  breasts  which  distinguished  their  race.  They 
were  prohibited  from  building  new  synagogues  or  eating 
with  Christians  or  acting  as  physicians  to  them.  Their 
trade,  already  crippled  by  the  bankers  of  Cahors,  was 
annihilated  by  a  royal  order  which  bade  them  renounce 
usury  under  pain  of  death.  At  last  persecution  could  do 
no  more,  and  Edward,  eager  at  the  moment  to  find  sup- 
plies for  his  treasury  and  himself  swayed  by  the  fanati- 
cism of  his  subjects,  bought  the  grant  of  a  fifteenth  from 
clergy  and  laity  by  consenting  to  drive  the  Jews  from  his 
realm.  No  share  of  the  enormities  which  accompanied 
this  expulsion  can  fall  upon  ihe  King,  for  he  not  only 
suffered  the  fugitives  to  take  their  personal  wealth  with 
them  but  punished  with  the  halter  those  who  plundered 
them  at  sea.  But  the  expulsion  was  none  the  less  cruel. 
Of  the  sixteen  thousand  who  preferred  exile  to  apostasy 
few  reached  the  shores  of  France.  Many  were  wrecked, 
others  robbed  and  flung  overboard.  One  ship-master 
turned  out  a  crew  of  wealthy  merchants  on  to  a  sandbank 
and  bade  them  call  a  new  Moses  to  save  them  from  the 
sea. 

From  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews,  as  from  his  nobler 
schemes  of  legal  and  administrative  reforms,  Edward  was 
suddenly  called  away  to  face  complex  questions  which 
awaited  him  in  the  North.  At  the  moment  which  we 
have  reached  the  kingdom  of  the  Scots  was  still  an  ag- 
gregate of  four  distinct  countries,  each  with  its  different 
people,  its  different  tongue,  its  different  history.  The 
old  Pictish  kingdom  across  the  Firth  of  Forth,  the  origi- 
nal Scot  kingdom  in  Argyle,  the  district  of  Cumbria  or 
Strathclyde,  and  the  Lowlands  which  stretched  from  the 
Firth  of  Forth  to  the  English  border,  had  become  united 
under  the  Kings  of  the  Scots ;  Pictland  by  inheritance, 


824  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Cumbria  by  a  grant  from  the  English  King  Eadmund,  the 
Lowlands  by  conquest,  confirmed  as  English  tradition 
alleged  by  a  grant  from  Cnut.     The  shadowy  claim  of 
dependence  on  the  English  Crown  which  dated  from  the 
days  when  a  Scotch  King  "  commended  "  himself  and  his 
people  to  Alfred's  son  Eadward,  a  claim  strengthened  by 
the  grant  of  Cumbria  to  Malcolm  as  a  "  fellow  worker  " 
of  the  English  sovereign  "  by  sea  and  land,"  may  have 
been  made  more  real  through  this  last  convention.     But 
whatever  change  the  acquisition  of  the  Lowlands  made 
in  the  relation  of  the  Scot  Kings  to  the  English  sover- 
eigns, it  certainly  affected  in  a  very  marked  way  their  re- 
lation both  to  England  and  to  their  own  realm.     Its  first 
result  was  the  fixing  of  the  royal  residence  in  their  new 
southern  dominion  at  Edinburgh ;  and  the  English  civili- 
zation which  surrounded  them  from  the  moment  of  this 
settlement  on  what  was  purely  English  ground  changed 
the  Scot  Kings  in  all  but  blood  into  Englishmen.     The 
marriage  of  King  Malcolm  with  Margaret,  the  sister  of 
Eadger  JEtheling,  not   only  hastened  this  change  but 
opened  a  way  to  the  English  crown.     Their  children  were 
regarded  by  a  large  party  within  England  as  representa- 
tives of  the  older  royal  race  and  as  claimants  of  the  throne, 
and  this  danger  grew  as  William's  devastation  of  the 
North  not  only  drove  fresh  multitudes  of  Englishmen  to 
settle  in  the  Lowlands  but  filled  the  Scotch  court  with 
English  nobles  who  fled  thither  for  refuge.     So  formida- 
ble indeed  became  the  pretensions  of  the  Scot  Kings  that 
they  forced  the  ablest  of  our  Norman  sovereigns  into  a 
complete  change  of  policy.     The  Conqueror  and  William 
the  Red  had  met  the  threats  of  the  Scot  sovereigns  by 
invasions  which  ended  again  and  again  in  an  illusory 
homage,  but  the  marriage  of  Henry  the  First  with  the 
Scottish  Matilda  robbed  the  claims  of  the  Scottish  line 
of  much  of  their  force  while  it  enabled  him  to  draw  their 
kings  into  far  closer  relations  with   the  Norman  throne. 
King  David  not  only  abandoned  the  ambitious  dreams  of 
his  predecessors  to  place  himself  at  the  head  of  his  niece 
Matilda's   party  in   her   contest  with  Stephen,  but   as 
Henry's  brother-in-law  he  figured  as  the  first  noble  of  the 


THE  CHAPTER.    1204—1291.  825 

English  Court  and  found  English  models  and  English 
support  in  the  work  of  organization  which  he  attempted 
within  his  own  dominions.  As  the  marriage  with  Mar- 
garet had  changed  Malcolm  from  a  Celtic  chieftain  into 
an  English  King,  so  that  of  Matilda  brought  about  the 
conversion  of  David  into  a  Norman  and  feudal  sovereign. 
His  court  was  filled  with  Norman  nobles  from  the  South, 
such  as  the  Balliols  and  Bruces  who  were  destined  to 
play  so  great  a  part  afterwards  but  who  now  for  the  first 
time  obtained  fiefs  in  the  Scottish  Tealm,  and  a  feudal 
jurisprudence  modelled  on  that  of  England  was  intro- 
duced into  the  Lowlands. 

A  fresh  connexion  between  Scotland  and  the  English 
sovereigns  began  with  the  grant  of  lordships  within 
England  itself  to  the  Scot  kings  or  their  sons.  The  Earl- 
dom of  Northumberland  was  held  by  David's  son  Henry, 
that  of  Huntingdon  by  Henry  the  Lion.  Homage  waa 
sometimes  rendered,  whether  for  these  lordships,  for  the 
Lowlands,  or  for  the  whole  Scottish  realm,  but  it  was  the 
capture  of  William  the  Lion  during  the  revolt  of  the 
English  baronage  which  first  suggested  to  the  ambition 
of  Henry  the  Second  the  project  of  a  closer  dependence 
of  Scotland  on  the  English  Crown.  To  gain  his  freedom 
William  consented  to  hold  his  kingdom  of  Henry  and  his 
heirs.  The  prelates  and  lords  of  Scotland  did  homage 
to  Henry  as  to  their  direct  lord,  and  a  right  of  appeal  in 
all  Scotch  causes  was  allowed  to  the  superior  court  of 
the  English  suzerain.  From  this  bondage  however  Scot- 
land was  freed  by  the  prodigality  of  Richard,  who  allowed 
her  to  buy  back  the  freedom  she  had  forfeited.  Both 
sides  fell  into  their  old  position,  but  both  were  ceasing 
gradually  to  remember  the  distinctions  between  the  vari- 
ous relations  in  which  the  Scot  King  stood  for  his  differ- 
ent provinces  to  the  English  Crown.  Scotland  had  come 
to  be  thought  of  as  a  single  country  ;  and  the  court  of 
London  transferred  to  the  whole  of  it  those  claims  of 
direct  feudal  suzerainty  which  at  most  applied  only  to 
Strathclyde,  while  the  court  of  Edinburgh  looked  on  the 
English  Lowlands  as  holding  no  closer  relation  to  Eng- 
land than  the  Pictish  lands  beyond  the  Forth.  Any 


826  HISTOEY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

difficulties  which  arose  were  evaded  by  a  legal  compro- 
mise. The  Scot  Kings  repeatedly  did  homage  to  the  Eng- 
lish sovereign,  but  with  a  reservation  of  rights  which 
were  prudently  left  unspecified.  The  English  King  ac- 
cepted the  homage  on  the  assumption  that  it  was  rendered 
to  him  as  overlord  of  the  Scottish  realm,  and  this  assump- 
tion was  neither  granted  nor  denied.  For  nearly  a  hun- 
dred years  the  relations  of  the  two  countries  were  thus 
kept  peaceful  and  friendly,  and  the  death  of  Alexander 
the  Third  seemed  destined  to  remove  even  the  necessity 
of  protests  by  a  closer  union  of  the  two  kingdoms.  Alex- 
ander had  wedded  his  only  daughter  to  the  King  of  Nor- 
way, and  after  long  negotiation  the  Scotch  Parliament 
proposed  the  marriage  of  Margaret,  "  the  Maid  of  Nor- 
way," the  girl  who  was  the  only  issue  of  this  marriage 
and  so  heiress  of  the  kingdom,  with  the  son  of  Edward 
the  First.  It  was,  however,  carefully  provided  in  the 
marriage  treaty  which  was  concluded  at  Brigham  in  1290, 
that  Scotland  should  remain  a  separate  and  free  kingdom, 
and  that  its  laws  and  customs  should  be  preserved  invio- 
late. No  military  aid  was  to  be  claimed  by  the  English 
King,  no  Scotch  appeal  to  be  carried  to  an  English  court. 
But  this  project  was  abruptly  frustrated  by  the  child's 
death  during  her  voyage  to  Scotland  in  the  following 
October,  and  with  the  rise  of  claimant  after  claimant  of 
the  vacant  throne,  Edward  was  drawn  into  far  other  re- 
lations to  the  Scottish  realm. 

Of  the  thirteen  pretenders  to  the  throne  of  Scotland 
only  three  could  be  regarded  as  serious  claimants.  By 
the  extinction  of  the  line  of  William  the  Lion  the  right 
of  succession  passed  to  the  daughters  of  his  brother 
David.  The  claim  of  John  Balliol,  Lord  of  Galloway, 
rested  on  his  descent  from  the  elder  of  these ;  that  of 
Robert  Bruce,  Lord  of  Annandale,  on  his  descent  from 
the  second;  that  of  John  Hastings,  Lord  of  Abergavenny, 
on  his  descent  from  the  third.  It  is  clear  that  at  this 
crisis  every  one  in  Scotland  or  out  of  it  recognized  some 
sort  of  overlordship  in  Edward,  for  the  Norwegian  King, 
the  Primate  of  St.  Andrews,  and  seven  of  the  Scotch 
Earls  had  already  appealed  to  him  before  Margaret's 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 — 1291.  32T 

death  ;  and  her  death  was  followed  by  the  consent  both 
of  the  claimants  and  the  Council  of  Regency  to  refer  the 
question  of  the  succession  to  his  decision  in  a  Parliament 
at  Norham.  But  the  oveiiordship  which  the  Scots  ac- 
knowledged was  something  far  less  direct  and  definite 
than  the  superiority  which  Edward  claimed  at  the  open- 
ing of  this  conference  in  May,  1291.  His  claim  was  sup- 
ported by  excerpts  from  monastic  chronicles  and  by  the 
slow  advance  of  an  English  army ;  while  the  Scotch 
lords,  taken  by  surprise,  found  little  help  in  the  delay 
which  was  granted  them.  At  the  opening  of  June,  there- 
fore, in  common  with  nine  of  the  claimants,  they  formally 
admitted  Edward's  direct  suzerainty.  To  the  nobles  in 
fact  the  concession  must  have  seemed  a  small  one,  for 
like  the  principal  claimants  they  were  for  the  most  part 
Norman  in  blood,  with  estates  in  both  countries,  and 
looking  for  honors  and  pensions  from  the  English  Court, 
From  the  Commons  who  were  gathered  with  the  nobles 
at  Norham  no  such  admission  of  Edward's  claims  could 
be  extorted;  but  in  Scotland,  feudalized  as  it  had  been 
by  David,  the  Commons  were  as  yet  of  little  weight  and 
their  opposition  was  quietly  passed  by.  All  the  rights  of 
a  feudal  suzerain  were  at  once  assumed  by  the  English 
King ;  he  entered  into  the  possession  of  the  country  as 
into  that  of  a  disputed  fief  to  be  held  by  its  overlord  till 
the  dispute  was  settled ;  his  peace  was  sworn  throughout 
the  land,  its  castles  delivered  into  his  charge,  while  its 
bishops  and  nobles  swore  homage  to  him  directly  as  their 
lord  superior.  Scotland  was  thus  reduced  to  the  subjec- 
tion which  she  had  experienced  under  Henry  the  Second ; 
but  the  full  discussion  which  followed  over  the  various 
claims  to  the  throne  showed  that  while  exacting  to  the 
full  what  he  believed  to  be  his  right,  Edward  desired  to 
do  justice  to  the  country  itself.  The  body  of  commis- 
sioners which  the  King  named  to  report  on  the  claims  to 
the  throne  were  mainly  Scotch.  A  proposal  for  the 
partition  of  the  realm  among  the  claimants  was  rejected 
as  contrary  to  Scotch  law.  On  the  report  of  the  com- 
missioners after  a  twelvemonth's  investigation  in  favor 
of  Balliol  as  representative  of  the  elder  branch  at  the 


328  HISTORY   OF    THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

close  of  the  year  1292,  his  homage  was  accepted  for  the 
whole  kingdom  of  Scotland  with  a  full  acknowledgment 
of  the  services  due  from  him  to  its  overlord.  The  castles 
were  at  once  delivered  to  the  new  monarch,  and  for  a 
time  there  was  peace. 

With  the  accession  of  Balliol  and  the  rendering  of  his 
homage  for  the  Scottish  realm  the  greatness  of  Edward 
reached  its  height.  He  was  lord  of  Britain  as  no  English 
King  had  been  before.  The  last  traces  of  Welsh  inde- 
pendence were  trodden  under  foot.  The  shadowy  claims 
of  supremacy  over  Scotland  were  changed  into  a  direct 
overlordship.  Across  the  one  sea  Edward  was  lord  of 
Guienne,  across  the  other  of  Ireland,  and  in  England 
itself  a  wise  and  generous  policy  had  knit  the  whole 
nation  round  his  throne.  Firmly  as  he  still  clung  to  pre- 
rogatives which  the  baronage  were  as  firm  not  to  own, 
the  main  struggle  for  the  Charter  was  over.  Justice  and 
good  government  were  secured.  The  personal  despotism 
which  John  had  striven  to  build  up,  the  imperial  au- 
tocracy which  had  haunted  the  imagination  of  Henry  the 
Third,  were  alike  set  aside.  The  rule  of  Edward,  vigor- 
ous and  effective  as  it  was,  was  a  rule  of  law,  and  of  law 
enacted  not  by  the  royal  will,  but  by  the  common  council 
of  the  realm.  Never  had  English  ruler  reached  a  greater 
height  of  power,  nor  was  there  any  sign  to  warn  the 
King  of  the  troubles  which  awaited  him.  France,  jealous 
as  it  was  of  his  greatness  and  covetous  of  his  Gascon  pos- 
sessions, he  could  hold  at  bay.  Wales  was  growing  tran- 
quil Scotland  gave  few  signs  of  discontent  or  restless- 
ness in  the  first  year  that  followed  the  homage  of  its 
King.  Under  John  Balliol  it  had  simply  fallen  back  into 
the  position  of  dependence  which  it  held  under  William 
the  Lion,  and  Edward  had  no  purpose  of  pushing  further 
his  rights  as  suzerain  than  Henry  the  Second  had  done. 
One  claim  of  the  English  -Crown  indeed  was  soon  a 
subject  of  dispute  between  the  lawyers  of  the  Scotch  and 
of  the  English  Council  boards.  Edward  would  have 
granted  as  freely  as  Balliol  himself  that  though  Scotland 
was  a  dependent  kingdom  it  was  far  from  being  an 
ordinary  fief  of  the  English  Crown.  By  feudal  custom  a 


THE   CHARTER.      1204—1291.  829 

distinction  had  always  been  held  to  exist  between  the 
relations  of  a  dependent  king  to  a  superior  lord  and 
those  of  a  vassal  noble  to  his  sovereign.  At  Balliol's 
homage  indeed  Edward  had  disclaimed  any  right  to  the 
ordinary  feudal  incidents  of  a  fief,  those  of  wardship  or 
marriage,  and  in  this  disclaimer  he  was  only  repeating 
the  reservations  of  the  marriage  treaty  of  Brigham. 
There  were  other  customs  of  the  Scotch  realm  as  incon- 
testable as  these.  Even  after  the  treaty  of  Falaise  the 
Scotch  King  had  not  been  held  bound  to  attend  the 
council  of  the  English  baronage,  to  do  service  in  English 
warfare,  or  to  contribute  on  the  part  of  his  Scotch  realm 
to  English  aids.  If  no  express  acknowledgment  of  these 
rights  had  been  made  by  Edward,  for  some  time  after  his 
acceptance  of  Balliol's  homage  they  were  practically  ob- 
served. The  claim  of  independent  justice  was  more 
doubtful,  as  it  was  of  higher  import  than  these.  The 
judicial  independence  of  Scotland  had  been  expressly 
reserved  in  the  marriage  treaty.  It  was  certain  that  no 
appeal  from  a  Scotch  King's  court  to  that  of  his  overlord 
had  been  allowed  since  the  days  of  William  the  Lion. 
But  in  the  jurisprudence  of  the  feudal  lawyers  the  right 
of  ultimate  appeal  was  the  test  of  sovereignty,  and 
Edward  regarded  Balliol's  homage  as  having  placed  him 
precisely  in  the  position  of  William  the  Lion  and  sub- 
jected his  decisions  to  those  of  his  overlord.  He  was 
resolute  therefore  to  assert  the  supremacy  of  his  court 
and  to  receive  Scotch  appeals. 

Even  here  however  the  quarrel  seemed  likely  to  end 
only  in  legal  bickering.  Balliol  at  first  gave  way,  and  it 
was  not  till  1293  that  he  alleged  himself  forced  by  the 
resentment  both  of  his  Baronage  and  his  people  to  take 
up  an  attitude  of  resistance.  While  appearing  therefore 
formally  at  Westminster  he  refused  to  answer  an  appeal 
before  the  English  courts  save  by  advice  of  his  Council. 
But  real  as  the  resentment  of  his  barons  may  have  been, 
it  was  not  Scotland  which  really  spurred  Balliol  to  this 
defiance.  His  wounded  pride  had  made  him  the  tool 
of  a  power  beyond  the  sea.  The  keenness  with  which 
France  had  watched  every  step  of  Edward's  success  in  the 


830  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

north  sprang  not  merely  from  a  natural  jealousy  of  his 
greatness,  but  from  its  bearing  on  a  great  object  of  French 
ambition.     One   fragment  of  Eleanor's  inheritance   still 
remained  to  her  descendants,  Guienne  and   Gascony,  the 
fair  lands  along  the   Garonne   and  the  territory  which 
stretched  south  of  that  river  to  the  Pyrenees.     It  was  this 
territory  that  now  tempted  the  greed  of  Philip  the  Fair, 
and  it  was  in  feeding  the  strife  between  England  and  the 
Scotch  King  that  Philip  saw  an  opening  for  winning  it. 
French  envoys  therefore  brought  promises  of  aid  to  the 
Scotch  Court ;  and  no  sooner  had  these  intrigues  moved 
Balliol  to  resent  the  claims  of  his  overlord  than  Philip 
found  a  pretext  for  open  quarrel  with  Edward  in  the  frays 
which  went  constantly  on  in  the  Channel  between  the 
mariners  of  Normandy  and   those  of  the  Cinque  Ports. 
They  culminated  at  this  moment  in  a  great  sea-fight  which 
proved  fatal  to  eight  thousand  Frenchmen,  and  for  this 
Philip  haughtily  demanded  redress.     Edward  saw  at  once 
the  danger  of  his  position.     He  did  his  best  to  allay  the 
storm  by  promise  of  satisfaction  to  France,  and  by  address- 
ing threats  of  punishment  to  the  English  seamen.     But 
Philip  still  clung  to  his  wrong,  while  the  national  passion 
which  was  to  prove  for  a  hundred  years  to  come  strong 
enough  to  hold  down  the  royal  policy  of  peace  showed 
itself  in  a  characteristic  defiance  with  which  the  seamen 
of  the  Cinque  Ports  met  Edward's  menaces.     "  Be  the 
King's  Council  well  advised,"  ran  this  remonstrance,  "  that 
if  wrong  or  grievance  be  done  them  in  any  fashion  against 
right,  they  will  sooner  forsake  wives,  children,  and  all 
that  they  have,  and  go  seek  though  the  seas  where  they 
shall  think  to  make  their  profit."     In  spite  therefore  of 
Edward's  efforts  the  contest  continued,  and  Philip  found 
in  it  an  opportunity  to  cite  the  King  before  his  court  at 
Paris  for  wrongs  done  to  him  as  suzerain.     It  was  hard 
for  Edward  to  dispute  the  summons  without  weakening 
the  position  which  his  own  sovereign  courts  had  taken 
up  towards  the  Scotch  King,  and  in  a  final  effort  to  avert 
the  conflict  the  King  submitted  to  a  legal  decision  of  the 
question,  and  to  a  formal  cession  of  Guienne  into  Philip's 
hands  for  forty  days  in  acknowledgment  of  his  supremacy. 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  881 

Bitter  as  the  sacrifice  must  have  been  it  failed  to  win 
peace.  The  forty  days  had  no  sooner  passed  than  Philip 
refused  to  restore  the  fortresses  which  had  been  left  in 
pledge.  In  February,  1294,  he  declared  the  English  king 
contumacious,  and  in  May  declared  his  fiefs  forfeited  to 
the  French  Crown.  Edward  was  driven  to  take  up  arms, 
but  a  revolt  in  Wales  deferred  the  expedition  to  the 
following  year.  No  sooner  however  was  it  again  taken 
in  hand  than  it  became  clear  that  a  double  danger  had  to 
be  met.  The  summons  which  Edward  addressed  to  the 
Scotch  barons  to  follow  him  in  arms  to  Guienne  was  dis- 
regarded. It  was  in  truth,  as  we  have  seen,  a  breach  of 
customary  law,  and  was  probably  meant  to  force  Scotland 
into  an  open  declaration  of  its  connexion  with  France. 
A  second  summons  was  followed  by  a  more  formal  refusal. 
The  greatness  of  the  danger  threw  Edward  on  England 
itself.  For  a  war  in  Guienne  and  the  north  he  needed 
supplies  ;  but  he  needed  yet  more  the  firm  support  of  his 
people  in  a  struggle  which,  little  as  he  foresaw  its  ultimate 
results,  would  plainly  be  one  of  great  difficulty  and  dan- 
ger. In  1295  he  called  a  Parliament  to  counsel  with  him 
on  the  affairs  of  the  realm,  but  with  the  large  statesman- 
ship which  distinguished  him  he  took  this  occasion  of 
giving  the  Parliament  a  shape  and  organization  which  has 
left  its  assembly  the  most  important  erent  in  English 
history. 

To  realize  its  importance  we  must  briefly  review  the 
changes  by  which  the  Great  Council  of  the  Norman 
Kings  had  been  gradually  transforming  itself  into  what 
was  henceforth  to  be  known  as  the  English  Parliament. 
Neither  the  Meeting  of  the  Wise  Men  before  the  Con- 
quest nor  the  Great  Council  of  the  Barons  after  it  had 
been  in  any  legal  or  formal  way  representative  bodies. 
The  first  theoretically  included  all  free  holders  of  land, 
but  it  shrank  at  an  early  time  into  a  gathering  of  earls, 
higher  nobles,  and  bishops  with  the  officers  and  thegns 
of  the  royal  household.  Little  change  was  made  in  the 
composition  of  this  assembly  by  the  Conquest,  for  the 
Great  Council  of  the  Norman  kings  was  supposed  to  in- 
clude all  tenants  who  had  directly  of  the  Crown,  the 


332  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

bishops  and  greater  abbots  (whose  character  as  indepen- 
dent spiritual  members  tended  more  and  more  to  merge 
in  their  position  as  barons),  and  the  high  officers  of  the 
Court.  But  though  its  composition  remained  the  same, 
the  character  of  the  assembly  was  essentially  altered ; 
from  a  free  gathering  of  "  Wise  Men  "  it  sank  to  a  Royal 
Court  of  feudal  vassals.  Its  functions  too  seem  to  have 
become  almost  nominal  and  its  powers  to  have  been  re- 
stricted to  the  sanctioning,  without  debate  or  possibility 
of  refusal,  all  grants  demanded  from  it  by  the  Crown. 
But  nominal  as  such  a  sanction  might  be,  the  "  counsel 
and  consent  "  of  the  Great  Council  was  necessary  for  the 
legal  validity  of  every  considerable  fiscal  or  political 
measure.  Its  existence  therefore  remained  an  effectual 
protest  against  the  imperial  theories  advanced  by  the 
lawyers  of  Henry  the  Second  which  declared  all  legisla- 
tive power  to  reside  wholly  in  the  sovereign.  It  was  in 
fact  under  Henry  that  these  assemblies  became  more 
regular,  and  their  functions  more  important.  The  re- 
forms which  marked  his  reign  were  issued  in  the  Great 
Council,  and  even  financial  matters  were  suffered  to  be 
debated  there.  But  it  was  not  till  the  grant  of  the  Great 
Charter  that  the  powers  of  this  assembly  over  taxation 
were  formally  recognized,  and  the  principle  established 
that  no  burden  beyond  the  customary  feudal  aids  might 
be  imposed  "  save  by  the  Common  Council  of  the 
Realm." 

The  same  document  first  expressly  regulated  its  form. 
In  theory,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Great  Council  consisted 
of  all  who  held  land  directly  of  the  Crown.  But  the 
same  causes  which  restricted  attendance  at  the  Witen- 
agemote  to  the  greater  nobles  told  on  the  actual  compo- 
sition of  the  Council  of  Barons.  While  the  attendance 
of  the  ordinary  tenants  in  chief,  the  Knights  or  "  Lesser 
Barons  "  as  they  were  called,  was  burdensome  from  its 
expense  to  themselves,  their  numbers  and  their  depen- 
dence on  the  higher  nobles  made  the  assembly  of  these 
knights  dangerous  to  the  Crown.  As  early  therefore  as 
the  time  of  Henry  the  First  we  find  a  distinction  recog- 
nized between  the  "  Greater  Barons,"  of  whom  the  Coun- 


THE  CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  338 

cil  was  usually  composed,  and  the  "  Lesser  Barons  "  who 
formed  the  bulk  of  the  tenants  of  the  Crown.  But 
though  the  attendance  of  the  latter  had  become  rare  their 
right  of  attendance  remained  intact.  While  enacting 
that  the  prelates  and  greater  barons  should  be  summoned 
by  special  writs  to  each  gathering  of  the  Council  a  re- 
markable provision  of  the  Great  Charter  orders  a  general 
summons  to  be  issued  through  the  Sheriff  to  all  direct 
tenants  of  the  Crown.  The  provision  was  probably  in- 
tended to  rouse  the  lesser  Baronage  to  the  exercise  of 
rights  which  had  practically  passed  into  desuetude,  but 
as  the  clause  is  omitted  in  later  issues  of  the  Charter  we 
may  doubt  whether  the  principle  it  embodied  ever  re- 
ceived more  than  a  very  limited  application.  There  are 
traces  of  the  attendance  of  a  few  of  the  lesser  knight- 
hood, gentry  perhaps  of  the  neighborhood  where  the  as- 
sembly was  held,  in  some  of  its  meetings  under  Henry 
the  Third,  but  till  a  late  period  in  the  reign  of  his  suc- 
cessor the  Great  Council  practically  remained  a  gather- 
ing of  the  greater  barons,  the  prelates,  and  the  high 
officers  of  the  Crown. 

The  change  which  the  Great  Charter  had  failed  to  ac- 
complish was  now  however  brought  about  by  the  social 
circumstances  of  the  time.  One  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  these  was  a  steady  decrease  in  the  number  of  the 
greater  nobles.  The  bulk  of  the  earldoms  had  already 
lapsed  to  the  Crown  through  the  extinction  of  the  families 
of  their  possessors ;  of  the  greater  baronies,  many  had 
practically  ceased  to  exist  by  their  division  among  female 
co-heiresses,  many  through  the  constant  struggle  of  the 
poorer  nobles  to  rid  themselves  of  their  rank  by  a  dis- 
claimer so  as  to  escape  the  burden  of  higher  taxation  and 
attendance  in  Parliament  which  it  involved.  How  far 
this  diminution  had  gone  we  may  see  from  the  fact  that 
hardly  more  than  a  hundred  barons  sat  in  the  earlier 
Councils  of  Edward's  reign.  But  while  the  number  of 
those  who  actually  exercised  the  privilege  of  assisting  in 
Parliament  was  rapidly  diminishing,  the  numbers  and 
wealth  of  the  "lesser  baronage,"  whose  right  of  attend- 
ance had  become  a  mere  constitutional  tradition,  was  as 


834  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

rapidly  increasing.  The  long  peace  and  prosperity  of 
the  realm,  the  extension  of  its  commerce  and  the  increased 
export  of  wool,  were  swelling  the  ranks  and  incomes  of 
the  country  gentry  as  well  as  of  the  freeholders  and  sub- 
stantial yeomanry.  We  have  already  noticed  the  effects 
of  the  increase  of  wealth  in  begetting  a  passion  for  the 
possession  of  land,  which  makes  this  reign  so  critical  a 
period  in  the  history  of  the  English  freeholder ;  but  the 
same  tendency  had  to  some  extent  existed  in  the  preced- 
ing century,  and  it  was  a  consciousness  of  the  growing 
importance  of  this  class  of  rural  proprietors  which  in- 
duced the  barons  at  the  moment  of  the  Great  Charter  to 
make  their  fruitless  attempt  to  induce  them  to  take  part 
in  the  deliberations  of  the  Great  Council.  But  while  the 
barons  desired  their  presence  as  an  aid  against  the  Crown, 
the  Crown  itself  desired  it  as  a  means  of  rendering  taxa- 
tion more  efficient.  So  long  as  the  Great  Council  re- 
mained a  mere  assembly  of  magnates  it  was  necessary 
for  the  King's  ministers  to  treat  separately  with  the  other 
orders  of  the  state  as  to  the  amount  and  assessment  of 
their  contributions.  The  grant  made  in  the  Great  Coun- 
cil was  binding  only  on  the  barons  and  prelates  who 
made  it ;  but  before  the  aids  of  the  boroughs,  the  Church, 
or  the  shires  could  reach  the  royal  treasury,  a  separate 
negotiation  had  to  be  conducted  by  the  officers  of  the 
Exchequer  with  the  reeves  of  each  town,  the  sheriff  and 
shire-court  of  each  county,  and  the  archdeacons  of  each 
diocese.  Bargains  of  this  sort  would  be  the  more  tedious 
and  disappointing  as  the  necessities  of  the  Crown  in- 
creased in  the  later  years  of  Edward,  and  it  became  a 
matter  of  fiscal  expediency  to  obtain  the  sanction  of  any 
proposed  taxation  through  the  presence  of  these  classes 
in  the  Great  Council  itself. 

The  effort  however  to  revive  the  old  personal  attendance 
of  the  lesser  baronage  which  had  broken  down  half  a 
century  before  could  hardly  be  renewed  at  a  time  when 
the  increase  of  their  numbers  made  it  more  impracticable 
than  ever ;  but  a  means  of  escape  from  this  difficulty  was 
fortunately  suggested  by  the  very  nature  of  the  court 
through  which  alone  a  summons  could  be  addressed  to 


THE    CHARTER.       1204 1291.  885 

the  landed  knighthood.  Amidst  the  many  judicial 
reforms  of  Henry  or  Edward  the  Shire  Court  remained 
unchanged.  The  haunted  mound  or  the  immemorial  oak 
round  which  the  assembly  gathered  (for  the  court  was 
often  held  in  the  open  air)  were  the  relics  of  a  time 
before  the  free  kingdom  had  sunk  into  a  shire  and  its 
Meetings  of  the  Wise  into  a  County  Court.  But  save 
that  the  King's  reeve  had  taken  the  place  of  the  King 
and  that  the  Norman  legislation  had  displaced  the  Bishop 
and  set  four  Coroners  by  the  Sheriff's  side,  the  gathering 
of  the  freeholders  remained  much  as  of  old.  The  local 
knighthood,  the  yeomanry,  the  husbandmen  of  the  county, 
were  all  represented  in  the  crowd  that  gathered  round 
the  Sheriff,  as  guarded  by  his  liveried  followers  he 
published  the  King's  writs,  announced  his  demand  of 
aids,  received  the  presentment  of  criminals  and  the 
inquest  of  the  local  jurors,  assessed  the  taxation  of  each 
district,  or  listened  solemnly  to  appeals  for  justice,  civil 
and  criminal,  from  all  who  held  themselves  oppressed  in 
the  lesser  courts  of  the  hundred  or  the  soke.  It  was  in 
the  County  Court  alone  that  the  Sheriff  could  legally 
summon  the  lesser  baronage  to  attend  the  Great  Council, 
and  it  was  in  the  actual  constitution  of  this  assembly 
that  the  Crown  found  a  solution  of  the  difficulty  which 
we  have  stated.  For  the  principle  of  representation  by 
which  it  was  finally  solved  was  coeval  with  the  Shire 
Court  itself.  In  all  cases  of  civil  or  criminal  justice  the 
twelve  sworn  assessors  of  the  Sheriff,  as  members  of 
a  class,  though  not  formally  deputed  for  that  purpose, 
practically  represented  the  judicial  opinion  of  the  county 
at  large.  From  every  hundred  came  groups  of  twelve 
sworn  deputies,  the  "jurors  "  through  whom  the  present- 
ments of  the  district  were  made  to  the  royal  officer  and 
with  whom  the  assessment  of  its  share  in  the  general 
taxation  was  arranged.  The  husbandmen  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  crowd,  clad  in  the  brown  smock  frock  which 
still  lingers  in  the  garb  of  our  carters  and  ploughmen, 
were  broken  up  into,  little  knots  of  five,  a  reeve  and  four 
assistants,  each  of  which  knots  formed  the  representative 
of  a  rural  township.  If  in  fact  we  regard  the  Shire 


336  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE!. 

Courts  as  lineally  the  descendants  of  our  earliest  English 
Witenagemotes,  we  may  justly  claim  the  principle  of 
parliamentary  representation  as  among  the  oldest  of  our 
institutions. 

It  was  easy  to  give  this  principle  a  further  extension 
by  the  choice  of  representatives  of  the  lesser  barons  in 
the  shire  courts  to  which  they  were  summoned  ;  but  it 
was  only  slowly  and  tentatively  that  this  process  was 
applied  to  the  reconstitution  of  the  Great  Council.  As 
early  as  the  close  of  John's  reign  there  are  indications  of 
approaching  change  in  the  summons  of  "  four  discreet 
knights  "  from  every  county.  Fresh  need  of  local  sup- 
port was  felt  by  both  parties  in  the  conflict  of  the  suc- 
ceeding reign,  and  Henry  and  his  barons  alike  summoned 
knights  from  each  shire  "  to  meet  on  the  common  business 
of  the  realm."  It  was  no  doubt  with  the  same  purpose 
that  the  writs  of  Earl  Simon  ordered  the  choice  of  knights 
in  each  shire  for  his  famous  Parliament  of  1265.  Some- 
thing like  a  continuous  attendance  may  be  dated  from 
the  accession  of  Edward,  but  it  was  long  before  the 
knights  were  regarded  as  more  than  local  deputies  for 
the  assessment  of  taxation  or  admitted  to  a  share  in  the 
general  business  of  the  Great  Council.  The  statute 
"  Quia  Emptores,"  for  instance,  was  passed  in  it  before 
the  knights  who  had  been  summoned  could  attend. 
Their  participation  in  the  deliberative  power  of  Parlia- 
ment, as  well  as  their  regular  and  continuous  attendance, 
dates  only  from  the  Parliament  of  1295.  But  a  far 
greater  constitutional  change  in  their  position  had 
already  taken  place  through  the  extension  of  electoral 
rights  to  the  freeholders  at  large.  The  one  class  entitled 
to  a  seat  in  the  Great  Council  was,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
of  the  lesser  baronage  ;  and  it  was  of  the  lesser  baronage 
alone  that  the  knights  were  in  theory  the  representatives. 
But  the  necessity  of  holding  their  election  in  the  County 
Court  rendered  any  restriction  of  the  electoral  body 
physically  impossible.  The  court  was  composed  of  the 
whole  body  of  freeholders,  and  no  sheriff  could  distinguish 
the  "  aye,  aye  "  of  the  yeoman  from  the  "  aye,  aye  "  of 
the  lesser  baron.  From  the  first  moment  therefore  of 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  337 

their  attendance  we  find  the  knights  regarded  not  as 
mere  representatives  of  the  baronage  but  as  knights  of 
the  shire,  and  by  this  silent  revolution  the  whole  body 
of  the  rural  freeholders  were  admitted  to  a  share  in  the 
government  of  the  realm. 

The  financial  difficulties  of  the  Crown  led  to  a  far 
more  radical  revolution  in  the  admission  into  the  Great 
Council  of  representatives  from  the  boroughs.  The 
presence  of  knights  from  each  shire  was  the  recognition 
of  an  older  right,  but  no  right  of  attendance  or  share  in 
the  national  "  counsel  and  assent"  could  be  pleaded  for 
the  burgesses  of  the  towns.  On  the  other  hand  the  rapid 
development  of  their  wealth  made  them  every  day  more 
important  as  elements  in  the  national  taxation.  From 
all  payment  of  the  dues  or  fines  exacted  by  the  King  as 
the  original  lord  of  the  soil  on  which  they  had  in  most 
cases  grown  up,  the  towns  had  long  since  freed  them- 
selves by  what  was  called  the  purchase  of  the  "  farm  of 
the  borough  ;  "  in  other  words,  by  the  commutation  of 
these  uncertain  dues  for  a  fixed  sum  paid  annually  to  the 
Crown  and  apportioned  by  their  own  magistrates  among 
the  general  body  of  the  burghers.  All  that  the  King 
legally  retained  was  the  right  enjoyed  by  every  great 
proprietor  of  levying  a  corresponding  taxation  on  his 
tenants  in  demesne  under  the  name  of  "  a  free  aid " 
whenever  a  grant  was  made  for  the  national  necessities 
by  the  barons  of  the  Great  Council.  But  the  temptation 
of  appropriating  the  growing  wealth  of  the  mercantile 
class  proved  stronger  than  legal  restrictions,  and  we  find 
both  Henry  the  Third  and  his  son  assuming  a  right  of 
imposing  taxes  at  pleasure  and  without  any  authority 
from  the  Council  even  over  London  itself.  The  bur- 
gesses could  refuse  indeed  the  invitation  to  contribute 
to  the  "  free  aids  "  demanded  by  the  royal  officers,  but 
the  suspension  of  their  markets  or  trading  privileges 
brought  them  in  the  end  to  submission.  Each  of  these 
"  free  aids,"  however,  had  to  be  extorted  after  a  long 
wrangle  between  the  borough  and  the  officers  of  the 
Exchequer  ;  and  if  the  towns  were  driven  to  comply  with 
what  they  considered  an  extortion  they  could  generally 


338  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

force  the  Crown  by  evasions  and  delays  to  a  compromise 
and  abatement  of  its  original  demands. 

The  same  financial  reasons  therefore  existed  for  desir- 
ing the  presence  of  borough  representatives  in  the  Great 
Council  as  existed  in  the  case  of  the  shires ;  but  it  was 
the  genius  of  Earl  Simon  which  first  broke  through  the 
older  constitutional  tradition  and  summoned  two  bur- 
gesses from  each  town  to  the  Parliament  of  1265.  Time 
had  indeed  to  pass  before  the  large  and  statesmanlike 
conception  of  the  great  patriot  could  meet  with  full  ac- 
ceptance. Through  the  earlier  part  of  Edward's  reign 
we  find  a  few  instances  of  the  presence  of  representatives 
from  tffe  towns,  but  their  scanty  numbers  and  the  irreg- 
ularity of  their  attendance  show  that  they  were  sum- 
moned rather  to  afford  financial  information  to  the  Great 
Council  than  as  representatives  in  it  of  an  Estate  of  the 
Realm.  But  every  year  pleaded  stronger  and  stronger 
for  their  inclusion,  and  in  the  Parliament  of  1295  that  of 
1265  found  itself  at  last  reproduced.  "  It  was  from  me 
that  he  learned  it,"  Earl  Simon  had  cried,  as  he  recog- 
nized the  military  skill  of  Edward's  onset  at  Evesham ; 
"  it  was  from  me  that  he  learnt  it,"  his  spirit  might  have 
exclaimed  as  he  saw  the  King  gathering  at  last  two  bur- 
gesses "  from  every  city,  borough,  and  leading  town " 
within  his  realm  to  sit  side  by  side  with  the  knights, 
nobles,  and  barons  of  the  Great  Council.  To  the  Crown 
the  change  was  from  the  first  an  advantageous  one.  The 
grants  of  subsidies  by  the  burgesses  in  Parliament  proved 
more  profitable  than  the  previous  extortions  of  the  Ex- 
chequer. The  proportions  of  their  grant  generally  ex- 
ceeded that  of  the  other  estates.  Their  representatives 
too  proved  far  more  compliant  with  the  royal  will  than 
the  barons  or  knights  of  the  shire  ;  only  on  one  occasion 
during  Edward's  reign  did  the  burgesses  waver  from 
their  general  support  of  the  Crown. 

It  was  easy  indeed  to  control  them,  for  the  selection 
of  boroughs  to  be  represented  remained  wholly  in  the 
King's  hands,  and  their  numbers  could  be  increased  or 
diminished  at  the  King's  pleasure.  The  determination 
was  left  to  the  sheriff,  and  at  a  hint  from  the  royal 


THE   CHABTBK.      1204—1291.  839 

Council  a  sheriff  of  Wilts  would  cut  down  the  number  of 
represented  boroughs  in  his  shire  from  eleven  to  three, 
or  a  sheriff  of  Bucks  declare  he  could  find  but  a  single 
borough,  that  of  Wycomb,  within  the  bounds  of  his 
county.  Nor  was  this  exercise  of  the  prerogative  ham- 
pered by  any  anxiety  on  the  part  of  the  towns  to  claim 
representative  privileges.  It  was  hard  to  suspect  that  a 
power  before  which  the  Crown  would  have  to  bow  lay 
in  the  ranks  of  soberly-clad  traders,  summoned  only  to 
assess  the  contributions  of  their  boroughs,  and  whose 
attendance  was  as  difficult  to  secure  as  it  seemed  burden- 
some to  themselves  and  the  towns  who  sent  them.  The 
mass  of  citizens  took  little  or  no  part  in  their  choice,  for 
they  were  elected  in  the  county  court  by  a  few  of  the 
principal  burghers  deputed  for  the  purpose ;  but  the  cost 
of  their  maintenance,  the  two  shillings  a  day  paid  to  the 
burgess  by  his  town  as  four  were  paid  to  the  knight  by 
his  county,  was  a  burden  from  which  the  boroughs  made 
desperate  efforts  to  escape.  Some  persisted  in  making  no 
return  to  the  sheriff.  Some  bought  charters  of  exemption 
from  the  troublesome  privilege.  Of  the  165  who  were 
summoned  by  Edward  the  First  more  than  a  third  ceased 
to  send  representatives  after  a  single  compliance  with  the 
royal  summons.  During  the  whole  time  from  the  reign  of 
Edward  the  Third  to  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Sixth  the 
sheriff  of  Lancashire  declined  to  return  the  names  of  any 
bo.oughs  at  all  within  that  county  "on  account  of  their 
poverty."  Nor  were  the  representatives  themselves  more 
anxious  to  appear  than  their  boroughs  to  send  them.  The 
busy  country  squire  and  the  thrifty  trader  were  equally 
reluctant  to  undergo  the  trouble  and  expense  of  a  journey 
to  Westminster.  Legal  measures  were  often  necessary  to 
ensure  their  presence.  Writs  still  exist  in  abundance  such 
as  that  by  which  Walter  le  Rous  is  "  held  to  bail  in  eight 
oxen  and  four  cart-horses  to  come  before  the  King  on  the 
day  specified  "  for  attendance  in  Parliament.  But  in  spite 
of  obstacles  such  as  these  the  presence  of  representatives 
from  the  boroughs  may  be  regarded  as  continuous  from  the 
Parliament  of  1295.  As  the  representation  of  the  lesser 
barons  had  widened  through  a  silent  change  into  that  of 


340  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  shire,  so  that  of  the  boroughs — restricted  in  theory 
to  those  in  the  royal  demesne — seems  practically  from 
Edward's  time  to  have  been  extended  to  all  who  were  in  a 
condition  to  pay  the  cost  of  their  representatives'  support. 
By  a  change  as  silent  within  the  Parliament  itself  the 
burgess,  originally  summoned  to  take  part  only  in  matters 
of  taxation,  was  at  last  admitted  to  a  full  share  in  the  de- 
liberations and  authority  of  the  other  orders  of  the  State. 
The  admission  of  the  burgesses  and  knights  of  the  shire 
to  the  assembly  of  1295  complete  the  fabric  of  our 
representative  constitution.  The  Great  Council  of  the 
Barons  became  the  Parliament  of  the  Realm.  Every  order 
of  the  state  found  itself  represented  in  this  assembly,  and 
took  part  in  the  grant  of  supplies,  the  work  of  legislation, 
and  in  the  end  the  control  of  government.  But  though  in 
all  essential  points  the  character  of  Parliament  has  re- 
mained the  same  from  that  time  to  this,  there  were  some 
remarkable  particulars  in  which  the  assembly  of  1295  dif- 
fered widely  from  the  present  Parliament  at  St.  Stephen's. 
Some  of  these  differences,  such  as  those  which  sprang 
from  the  increased  powers  and  changed  relations  of  the 
different  orders  among  themselves,  we  shall  have  occasion 
to  consider  at  a  later  time.  But  a  difference  of  a  far 
more  startling  kind  than  these  lay  in  the  presence  of  the 
clergy.  If  there  is  any  part  in  the  parliamentary  scheme 
of  Edward  the  First  which  can  be  regarded  as  especially 
his  own,  it  is  his  project  for  the  representation  of  the 
ecclesiastical  order.  The  King  had  twice  at  least  sum- 
moned its  "  proctors  "  to  Great  Councils  before  1295,  but 
it  was  then  only  that  the  complete  representation  of  the 
Church  was  definitely  organized  by  the  insertion  of  a 
clause  in  the  writ  which  summoned  a  bishop  to  Parliament 
requiring  the  personal  attendance  of  all  archdeacons, 
deans,  or  priors  of  cathedral  churches,  of  a  proctor  for 
each  cathedral  chapter,  and  two  for  the  clergy  within  his 
diocese.  The  clause  is  repeated  in  the  writs  of  the  present 
day,  but  its  practical  effect  was  foiled  almost  from  the 
first  by  the  resolute  opposition  of  those  to  whom  it  was 
addressed.  What  the  towns  failed  in  doing  the  clergy 
actually  did.  Even  when  forced  to  comply  with  the  royal 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  341 

summons,  as  they  seem  to  have  been  forced  during  Ed- 
ward's reign,  they  sat  jealously  by  themselves,  and  their 
refusal  to  vote  supplies  in  any  but  their  own  provincial 
assemblies,  or  convocations,  of  Canterbury  and  York  left 
the  Crown  without  a  motive  for  insisting  on  their  con- 
tinued attendance.  Their  presence  indeed,  though  still 
at  times  granted  on  some  solemn  occasions,  became  so 
pure  a  formality  that  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
it  had  sunk  wholly  into  desuetude.  In  their  anxiety  to 
preserve  their  existence  as  an  isolated  and  privileged  order 
the  clergy  flung  away  a  power  which,  had  they  retained 
it,  would  have  ruinously  hampered  the  healthy  develop- 
ment of  the  state.  To  take  a  single  instance,  it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  the  great  changes  of  the  Reformation  could 
have  been  brought  about  had  a  good  half  of  the  House 
of  Commons  consisted  purely  of  churchmen,  whose  num- 
bers would  have  been  backed  by  the  weight  of  their  prop- 
erty as  possessors  of  a  third  of  the  landed  estates  of  the 
realm. 

A  hardly  less  important  difference  may  be  found  in 
the  gradual  restriction  of  the  meetings  of  Parliament  to 
Westminster.  The  name  of  Edward's  statutes  remind  us 
of  its  convocation  at  the  most  various  quarters,  at  Win- 
chester, Acton  Burnell,  Northampton.  It  was  at  a  later 
time  that  Parliament  became  settled  in  the  straggling 
village  which  had  grown  up  in  the  marshy  swamp  of  the 
Isle  of  Thorns  beside  the  palace  whose  embattled  pile 
towered  over  the  Thames  and  the  new  Westminster 
which  was  still  rising  in  Edward's  day  on  the  site  of  the 
older  church  of  the  Confessor.  It  is  possible  that,  while 
contributing  greatly  to  its  constitutional  importance,  this 
settlement  of  the  Parliament  may  have  helped  to  throw 
into  the  background  its  character  as  a  supreme  court  of 
appeal.  The  proclamation  by  which  it  was  called  together 
invited  "  all  who  had  any  grace  to  demand  of  the  King 
in  Parliament,  or  any  plaint  to  make  of  matters  which 
could  not  be  redressed  or  determined  by  ordinary  course 
of  law,  or  who  had  been  in  any  way  aggrieved  by  any  of 
the  King's  ministers  or  justices  or  sheriffs,  or  their  bailiffs, 
or  any  other  officer,  or  have  been  unduly  assessed,  rated, 


842  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

charged,  or  sur-charged  to  aids,  subsidies,  or  taxes,"  to 
deliver  their  petitions  to  receivers  who  sat  in  the  Great 
Hall  of  the  Palace  of  Westminster.  The  petitions  were 
forwarded  to  the  King's  Council,  and  it  was  probably 
the  extension  of  the  jurisdiction  of  that  body  and  the 
rise  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  which  reduced  this  ancient 
right  of  the  subject  to  the  formal  election  of  "  Triers  of 
Petitions  "  at  the  opening  of  every  new  Parliament  by 
the  House  of  Lords,  a  usage  which  is  still  continued. 
But  it  must  have  been  owing  to  some  memory  of  the 
older  custom  that  the  subject  always  looked  for  redress 
against  injuries  from  the  Crown  or  its  ministers  to  the 
Parliament  of  the  realm. 

The  subsidies  granted  by  the  Parliament  of  1295  fur- 
nished the  King  with  the  means  of  warfare  with  both 
Scotland  and  France,  while  they  assured  him  of  the  sym- 
pathy of  his  people  in  the  contest.     But  from  the  first 
the  reluctance  of  Edward  to  enter  on  the  double  war 
was  strongly  marked.    The  refusal  of  the  Scotch  baronage 
to  obey  his  summons  had  been  followed  on  Balliol's  part 
by  two  secret  steps  which  made  a  struggle  inevitable — by 
a  request  to  Rome  for  absolution  from  his  oath  of  fealty 
and  by  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Philip  the  Fair.     As  yet 
however  no  open   breach  had  taken  place,   and  while 
Edward  in  1296  summoned  his  knighthood  to  meet  him 
in  the  north,  he  called  a  Parliament  at  Newcastle  in  the 
hope  of  bringing  about  an  accommodation  with  the  Scot 
King.     But  all  thought  of  accommodation  was  roughly 
ended  by  the  refusal  of  Balliol  to  attend  the  Parliament, 
by  the  rout  of  a  small  body  of  English  troops,  and  by 
the  Scotch  investment  of  Carlisle.     Taken  as  he  was  by 
surprise,  Edward  showed  at  once  the  vigor  and  rapidity 
of  his  temper.     His  army  marched  upon  Berwick.     The 
town  was   a  rich  and  well-peopled  one,  and  although  a 
wooden  stockade  furnished  its  only  rampart  the  serried 
ranks  of  citizens  behind  it  gave  little  hope  of  an  easy 
conquest.     Their  taunts  indeed  stung  the  King  to  the 
quick.     As  his  engineers  threw  up  rough  entrenchments 
for  the  besieging  army  the  burghers  bade  him  wait  till  he 
won  the  town  before  he  began  digging  round  it.    "  Kynge 


THE    CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  348 

Edward,"  they  shouted,  "  waune  thou  havest  Berwick, 
pike  thee  ;  waune  thou  havest  geten,  dike  thee."  But  the 
stockade  was  stormed  with  the  loss  of  a  single  knight, 
nearly  eight  thousand  of  the  citizens  were  mown  down  in 
a  ruthless  carnage,  and  a  handful  of  Flemish  traders  who 
held  the  town-hall  stoutly  against  all  assailants  were 
burned  alive  in  it.  The  massacre  only  ceased  when  a 
procession  of  priests  bore  the  host  to  the  King's  presence, 
praying  for  mercy.  Edward  with  a  sudden  and  charac- 
teristic burst  of  tears  called  off  his  troops ;  but  the  town 
was  ruined  forever,  and  the  greatest  merchant  city  of 
northern  Britain  sank  from  that  time  into  a  petty  sea- 
port. 

At  Berwick  Edward  received  Balliol's  formal  defiance. 
"  Has  the  fool  done  this  folly  ?  "  the  King  cried  in  haughty 
scorn  ;  "  if  he  will  not  come  to  us,  we  will  come  to  him." 
The  terrible  slaughter  however  had  done  its  work,  and 
his  march  northward  was  a  triumphal  progress.  Edin- 
burgh, Stirling,  and  Perth  opened  their  gates,  Bruce 
joined  the  English  army,  and  Balliol  himself  surrendered 
and  passed  without  a  blow  from  his  throne  to  an  English 
prison.  No  further  punishment  however  was  exacted 
from  the  prostrate  realm.  Edward  simply  treated  it  as  a 
fief,  and  declared  its  forfeiture  to  be  the  legal  consequence 
of  Balliol's  treason.  It  lapsed  in  fact  to  its  suzerain  ;  and 
its  earls,  barons,  and  gentry  swore  homage  in  Parliament 
at  Berwick  to  Edward  as  their  King.  The  sacred  stone 
on  which  its  older  sovereigns  had  been  installed,  an  ob- 
long block  of  limestone  which  legend  asserted  to  have 
been  the  pillow  of  Jacob  as  angels  ascended  and  descended 
upon  him,  was  removed  from  Scone  and  placed  in  West- 
minster by  the  shrine  of  the  Confessor.  It  was  enclosed 
by  Edward's  order  in  a  stately  seat,  which  became  from 
that  hour  the  coronation  chair  of  English  Kings.  To  the 
King  himself  the  whole  business  must  have  seemed  another 
and  easier  conquest  of  Wales,  and  the  mercy  and  just  gov- 
ernment which  had  followed  his  first  success  followed  his 
second  also.  The  government  of  the  new  dependency  was 
entrusted  to  John  of  Warenne,  Earl  of  Surrey,  at  the  head 
of  an  English  Council  of  Regency.  Pardon  was  freely 


344  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

extended  to  all  who  had  resisted  the  invasion,  and  order 
and  public  peace  were  rigidly  enforced. 

But  the  triumph,  rapid  and  complete  as  it  was,  had 
more  than  exhausted  the  aid  granted  by  the  Parliament. 
The  treasury  was  utterly  drained.  The  struggle  indeed 
widened  as  every  month  went  on  ;  the  costly  fight  with 
the  French  in  Gascony  called  for  supplies,  while  Edward 
was  planning  a  yet  costlier  attack  on  Northern  France 
with  the  aid  of  Flanders  Need  drove  him  on  his  return 
from  Scotland  in  1297  to  measures  of  tyrannical  extor- 
tion which  seemed  to  recall  the  times  of  John.  His  first 
blow  fell  on  the  Church.  At  the  close  of  1294  he  had 
already  demanded  half  their  annual  income  from  the 
clergy,  and  so  terrible  was  his  wrath  at  their  resistance 
that  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  who  stood  forth  to  remon- 
strate, dropped  dead  of  sheer  terror  at  his  feet.  "  If  any 
oppose  the  King's  demand,"  said  a  royal  envoy  in  the 
midst  of  the  Convocation,  "  let  him  stand  up  that  he 
may  be  noted  as  an  enemy  to  the  King's  peace."  The 
outraged  Churchmen  fell  back  on  an  untenable  plea  that 
their  aid  was  due  solely  to  Rome,  and  alleged  the  bull 
of  "  Clericis  Laicos,"  issued  by  Boniface  the  Eighth  at  this 
moment,  a  bull  which  forbad  the  clergy  to  pa}'  secular 
taxes  from  their  ecclesiastical  revenues,  as  a  ground  for 
refusing  to  comply  with  further  taxation.  In  1297 
Archbishop  Winchelsey  refused  on  the  ground  of  this 
to  make  any  grant,  and  Edward  met  his  refusal  by  a  gen- 
eral outlawry  of  the  whole  order.  The  King's  courts 
were  closed,  and  all  justice  denied  to  those  who  refused 
the  King  aid.  By  their  actual  plea  the  clergy  had  put 
themselves  formally  in  the  wrong,  and  the  outlawry  soon 
forced  them  to  submission  ;  but  their  aid  did  little  to  re- 
cruit the  exhausted  treasury.  The  pressure  of  the  war 
steadily  increased,  and  far  wider  measures  of  arbitrary 
taxation  were  needful  to  equip  an  expedition  which  Ed- 
ward prepared  to  lead  in  person  to  Flanders.  The 
country  gentlemen  were  compelled  to  take  up  knight- 
hood or  to  compound  for  exemption  from  the  burden- 
some honor,  and  forced  contributions  of  cattle  and  corn 
were  demanded  from  the  counties.  Edward  no  doubt 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  345 

purposed  to  pay  honestly  for  these  supplies,  but  his'  ex- 
actions from  the  merchant  class  rested  on  a  deliber- 
ate theory  of  his  royal  rights.  He  looked  on  the  cus- 
toms as  levied  absolutely  at  his  pleasure,  and  the  ex- 
port duty  on  wool — now  the  staple  produce  of  the 
country — was  raised  to  six  times  its  former  amount.  Al- 
though he  infringed  no  positive  provision  of  charter  or 
statute  in  his  action,  it  was  plain  that  his  course  really 
undid  all  that  had  been  gained  by  the  Barons'  war. 
But  the  blow  had  no  sooner  been  struck  than  Edward 
found  stout  resistance  within  his  realm.  The  barons 
drew  together  and  called  a  meeting  for  the  redress  of 
their  grievances.  The  two  greatest  of  the  English  no- 
bles, Humfrey  de  Bohun,  Earl  of  Hereford,  and  Roger 
Bigod,  Earl  of  Norfolk,  placed  themselves  at  the  head  of 
the  opposition.  The  first  was  Constable,  the  second 
Earl  Marshal,  and  Edward  bade  them  lead  a  force  to 
Gascony  as  his  lieutenants  while  he  himself  sailed  to 
Flanders.  Their  departure  would  have  left  the  Baron- 
age without  leaders,  and  the  two  earls  availed  them- 
selves of  a  plea  that  they  were  not  bound  to  foreign 
service  save  in  attendance  on  the  King  to  refuse  obedi- 
ence to  the  royal  orders.  "  By  God,  Sir  Earl,"  swore  the 
King  to  the  Earl  Marshal,  "you  shall  either  go  or  hang !  " 
"  By  God,  Sir  King,"  was  the  cool  reply,  "  I  will  neither 
go  nor  hang  !  "  Both  parties  separated  in  bitter  anger  ; 
the  King  to  seize  fresh  wool,  to  outlaw  the  clergy,  and 
to  call  an  army  to  his  aid  ;  the  barons  to  gather  in  arms, 
backed  by  the  excommunication  of  the  Primate.  But 
the  strife  went  no  further  than  words.  Ere  the  Parlia- 
ment he  had  convened  could  meet,  Edward  had  discov- 
ered his  own  powerlessness ;  Winchelsey  offered  his  me- 
diation ;  and  Edward  confirmed  the  Great  Charter  and 
the  Charter  of  Forests  as  the  price  of  a  grant  from  the 
clergy  and  a  subsidy  from  the  Commons.  With  one  of 
those  sudden  revulsions  of  feeling  of  which  his  nature 
was  capable  the  King  stood  before  his  people  in  West- 
minster Hall  and  owned  with  a  burst  of  tears  that  he 
had  taken  their  substance  without  due  warrant  of  law. 
His  passionate  appeal  to  their  loyalty  wrested  a  reluc- 


346  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

tant  assent  to  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  in  August 
Edward  sailed  for  Flanders,  leaving  his  son  regent  of 
the  realm.  But  the  crisis  had  taught  the  need  of  further 
securities  against  the  royal  power,  and  as  Edward  was 
about  to  embark  the  barons  demanded  his  acceptance  of 
additional  articles  to  the  Charter,  expressly  renouncing 
his  right  of  taxing  the  nation  without  its  own  consent. 
The  King  sailed  without  complying,  but  Winchelsey 
joined  the  two  earls  and  the  citizens  of  London  in  for- 
bidding any  levy  of  supplies  till  the  Great  Charter  with 
these  clauses  was  again  confirmed ;  and  the  trouble  in 
Scotland  as  well  as  the  still  pending  strife  with  France 
left  Edward  helpless  in  the  barons'  hands.  The  Great 
Charter  and  the  Charter  of  the  Forests  were  solemnly 
confirmed  by  him  at  Ghent  in  November ;  and  formal 
pardon  was  issued  to  the  Earls  of  Hereford  and  Norfolk. 
The  confirmation  of  the  Charter,  the  renunciation  of 
any  right  to  the  exactions  by  which  the  people  were  ag- 
grieved, the  pledge  that  the  King  would  no  more  take 
"  such  aids,  tasks,  and  prizes  but  by  common  assent  of 
the  realm,"  the  promise  not  to  impose  on  wool  any  heavy 
customs  or  "  maletot "  without  the  same  assent,  was  the 
close  of  the  great  struggle  which  had  begun  at  R-nny- 
mede.  The  clauses  so  soon  removed  from  the  Great 
Charter  were  now  restored ;  and  evade  them  as  they 
might,  the  kings  were  never  able  to  free  themselves  from 
the  obligation  to  seek  aid  solely  from  the  general  consent 
of  their  subjects.  It  was  Scotland  which  had  won  this 
victory  for  English  freedom.  At  the  moment  when 
Edward  and  the  earls  stood  face  to  face  the  King  saw  his 
work  in  the  north  suddenly  undone.  Both  the  justice 
and  injustice  of  the  new  rule  proved  fatal  to  it.  The 
wrath  of  the  Scots,  already  kindled  by  the  intrusion  of 
English  priests  into  Scotch  livings  and  by  the  grant  of 
lands  across  the  border  to  English  barons,  was  fanned  to 
fury  by  the  strict  administration  of  law  and  the  repres- 
sion of  feuds  and  cattle-lifting.  The  disbanding  too  of 
troops,  which  was  caused  by  the  penury  of  the  royal  ex- 
chequer, united  with  the  licence  of  the  soldiery  who 
remained  to  quicken  the  national  sense  of  wrong.  The 


THE   CHARTER.      1204 — 1291.  347 

disgraceful  submission  of  their  leaders  brought  the  people 
themselves  to  the  front.  In  spite  of  a  hundred  years  of 
peace  the  farmer  of  Fife  or  the  Lowlands  and  the  artizan 
of  the  towns  remained  stout-hearted  Northumbrian  Eng- 
lishmen. They  had  never  consented  to  Edward's  suprem- 
acy, and  their  blood  rose  against  the  insolent  rule  of  the 
stranger.  The  genius  of  an  outlaw  knight,  William 
Wallace,  saw  in  their  smouldering  discontent  a  hope  of 
freedom  for  his  country,  and  his  daring  raids  on  outlying 
parties  of  the  English  soldiery  roused  the  country  at  last 
into  revolt. 

Of  Wallace  himself,  of  his  life  or  temper,  we  know 
little  or  nothing;  the  very  traditions  of  his  gigantic 
stature  and  enormous  strength  are  dim  and  unhistorical. 
But  the  instinct  of  the  Scotch  people  has  guided  it  aright 
in  choosing  him  for  its  national  hero.  He  was  the  first 
to  assert  freedom  as  a  national  birthright,  and  amidst  the 
despair  of  nobles  and  priests  to  call  the  people  itself  to 
arms.  At  the  head  of  an  army  drawn  principally  from 
the  coast  districts  north  of  the  Tay,  which  were  inhabited 
by  a  population  of  the  same  blood  as  that  of  the  Low- 
lands,  Wallace,  in  September,  1297,  encamped  near  Stir- 
ling, the  pass  between  the  north  and  the  south,  and 
awaited  the  English  advance.  It  was  here  that  he  was 
found  by  the  English  army.  The  offers  of  John  of  War- 
enne  were  scornfully  rejected :  "  We  have  come,"  said 
the  Scottish  leader,  "  not  to  make  peace,  but  to  free  our 
country."  The  position  of  Wallace  behind  a  loop  of 
Forth  was  in  fact  chosen  with  consummate  skill.  The 
one  bridge  which  crossed  the  river  was  only  broad  enough 
to  admit  two  horsemen  abreast ;  and  though  the  English 
army  had  been  passing  from  daybreak  but  half  its  force 
was  across  at  noon,  when  Wallace  closed  on  it  and  cut  it 
after  a  short  combat  to  pieces  in  sight  of  its  comrades. 
The  retreat  of  the  Earl  of  Surrey  over  the  border  left 
Wallace  head  of  the  country  he  had  freed,  and  for  a  few 
months  he  acted  as  "  Guardian  of  the  Realm  "  in  Balliol'a 
name,  and  headed  a  wild  foray  into  Northumberland  in 
which  the  barbarous  cruelties  of  his  men  left  a  bitter 
hatred  behind  them  which  was  to  wreak  its  vengeance  in 


348  HISTOEY   OF   THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  later  bloodshed  of  the  war.  His  reduction  of  Stir- 
ling Castle  at  last  called  Edward  to  the  field.  In  the 
spring  of  1298  the  King's  diplomacy  had  at  last  wrung  a 
truce  for  two  years  from  Philip  the  Fair ;  and  he  at  once 
returned  to  England  to  face  the  troubles  in  Scotland. 
Marching  northward  with  a  larger  host  than  had  ever 
followed  his  banner,  he  was  enabled  by  treachery  to  sur- 
prise Wallace  as  he  fell  back  to  avoid  an  engagement, 
and  to  force  him  on  the  twenty-second  of  July  to  battle 
near  Falkirk.  The  Scotch  force  consisted  almost  wholly 
of  foot,  and  Wallace  drew  up  his  spearmen  in  four  great 
hollow  circles  or  squares,  the  outer  ranks  kneeling  and 
the  whole  supported  by  bow-men  within,  while  a  small 
force  of  horse  were  drawn  up  as  a  reserve  in  the  rear.  It 
was  the  formation  of  Waterloo,  the  first  appearance  in 
our  history  since  the  day  of  Senlac  of  "  that  unconquer- 
able British  infantry  "  before  which  chivalry  was  des- 
tined to  go  down.  For  a  moment  it  had  all  Waterloo's 
success.  u  I  have  brought  you  to  the  ring,  hop  (dance) 
if  you  can,"  are  words  of  rough  humor  that  reveal  the 
very  soul  of  the  patriot  leader,  and  the  serried  ranks 
answered  well  to  his  appeal.  The  Bishop  of  Durham 
who  led  the  English  van  shrank  wisely  from  the  look  of 
the  squares.  ''Back  to  your  mass,  Bishop,"  shouted  the 
reckless  knights  behind  him,  but  the  body  of  horse 
dashed  itself  vainly  on  the  wall  of  spears.  Terror  spread 
through  the  English  army,  and  its  Welsh  auxiliaries 
drew  off  in  a  bod}r  from  the  field.  But  the  generalship 
of  Wallace  was  met  by  that  of  the  King.  Drawing  his 
bow-men  to  the  front,  Edward  riddled  the  Scottish  ranks 
with  arrows  and  then  hurled  his  cavalry  afresh  on  the 
wavering  line.  In  a  moment  all  was  over,  the  maddened 
knights  rode  in  and  out  of  the  broken  ranks,  slaying 
without  mercy.  Thousands  fell  on  the  field,  and  Wallace 
himself  escaped  with  difficulty,  followed  by  a  handful  of 
men. 

But  ruined  as  the  cause  of  freedom  seemed,  his  work 
was  done.  He  had  roused  Scotland  into  life,  and  even 
a  defeat  like  Falkirk  left  her  unconquered.  Edward 
remained  master  only  of  the  ground  he  stood  on  :  want 


THE   CHARTEK.      1204 — 1291.  349 

of  supplies  forced  him  at  last  to  retreat ;  and  in  the 
summer  of  the  following  year,  1299,  when  Balliol,  released 
from  his  English  prison,  withdrew  into  France,  a  regency 
of  the  Scotch  nobles  under  Robert  Bruce  and  John 
Comyn  continued  the  struggle  for  independence. 
Troubles  at  home  and  danger  from  abroad  stayed  Ed- 
ward's hand.  The  barons  still  distrusted  his  sincerity, 
and  though  at  their  demand  he  renewed  the  Confirmation 
in  the  spring  of  1299,  his  attempt  to  add  an  evasive 
clause  saving  the  right  of  the  Crown  proved  the  justice 
of  their  distrust.  In  spite  of  a  fresh  and  unconditional 
renewal  of  it  a  strife  over  the  Forest  Charter  went  on 
till  the  opening  of  1301,  when  a  new  gathering  of  the 
barons  in  arms  with  the  support  of  Archbishop  Win- 
chelsey  wrested  from  him  its  full  execution.  What 
aided  freedom  within  was  as  of  old  the  peril  without. 
France  was  still  menacing,  and  a  claim  advanced  by 
Pope  Boniface  the  Eighth  at  its  suggestion  to  the  feudal 
superiority  over  Scotland  arrested  a  new  advance  of  the 
King  across  the  border.  A  quarrel  however  which  broke 
out  between  Philip  le  Bel  and  the  Papacy  removed  all 
obstacles.  It  enabled  Edward  to  defy  Boniface  and  to 
wring  from  France  a  treaty  in  which  Scotland  was 
abandoned.  In  1304  he  resumed  the  work  of  invasion, 
and  again  the  nobles  flung  down  their  arms  as  he  marched 
to  the  North.  Comyn,  at  the  head  of  the  Regency, 
acknowledged  his  sovereignty,  and  the  surrender  of 
Stirling  completed  the  conquest  of  Scotland.  But  the 
triumph  of  Edward  was  only  the  prelude  to  the  carrying 
out  of  his  designs  for  knitting  the  two  countries  together 
by  a  generosity  and  wisdom  which  reveal  the  greatness 
of  his  statesmanship.  A  general  amnesty  was  extended 
to  all  who  had  shared  in  the  resistance.  Wallace,  who 
refused  to  avail  himself  of  Edward's  mercy,  was  captured 
and  eondemned  to  death  at  Westminster  on  charges  of 
treason,  sacrilege,  and  robbery.  The  head  of  the  great 
patriot,  crowned  in  mockery  with  a  circlet  of  laurel,  was 
placed  upon  London  Bridge.  But  the  execution  of 
Wallace  was  the  one  blot  on  Edward's  clemency.  With 
a  masterly  boldness  he  entrusted  the  government  of  the 


850  HISTOBY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

country  to  a  council  of  Scotch  nobles,  many  of  whom 
were  freshly  pardoned  for  their  share  in  the  war,  and 
anticipated  the  policy  of  Cromwell  by  allotting  ten 
representatives  to  Scotland  in  the  Common  Parliament 
of  his  realm.  A  convocation  was  summoned  at  Perth 
for  the  election  of  these  representatives,  and  a  great 
judicial  scheme  which  was  promulgated  in  this  assembly 
adopted  the  amended  laws  of  King  David  as  the  base  of 
a  new  legislation,  and  divided  the  country  for  judicial 
purposes  into  four  districts,  Lothian,  Galloway,  the 
Highlands,  and  the  land  between  the  Highlands  and  the 
Forth,  at  the  head  of  each  of  which  were  placed  two 
justiciaries,  the  one  English  and  the  other  Scotch. 

With  the  conquest  and  settlement  of  Scotland  the 
glory  of  Edward  seemed  again  complete.  The  bitterness 
of  his  humiliation  at  home  indeed  still  preyed  upon  him, 
and  in  measure  after  measure  we  see  his  purpose  of 
renewing  the  strife  with  the  baronage.  In  1303  he  found 
a  means  of  evading  his  pledge  to  levy  no  new  taxes  on 
merchandise  save  by  assent  of  the  realm  in  a  consent  of 
the  foreign  merchants,  whether  procured  by  royal  pressure 
or  no,  to  purchase  by  stated  payments  certain  privileges 
of  trading.  In  this  "New  Custom"  lay  the  origin  of 
our  import  duties.  A  formal  absolution  from  his  promises 
which  he  obtained  from  Pope  Clement  the  Fifth  in  1305 
showed  that  he  looked  on  his  triumph  in  the  North  as 
enabling  him  to  reopen  the  questions  which  he  had  yielded. 
But  again  Scotland  stayed  his  hand.  Only  four  months 
had  passed  since  its  submission,  and  he  was  preparing 
for  a  joint  Parliament  of  the  two  nations  at  Carlisle, 
when  the  conquered  country  suddenly  sprang  again  to 
arms.  Its  new  leader  was  Robert  Bruce,  a  grandson  of 
one  of  the  original  claimants  of  the  crown.  The  Norman 
house  of  Bruce  formed  a  part  of  the  Yorkshire  baronage, 
but  it  had  acquired  through  intermarriages  the  Earldom 
of  Carrick  and  the  Lordship  of  Annandale.  Both  the 
claimant  and  his  son  had  been  pretty  steadily  on  the 
English  side  in  the  contest  with  Balliol  and  Wallace, 
and  Robert  had  himself  been  trained  in  the  English  court 
and  stood  high  in  the  King's  favor.  But  the  withdrawal 


THE   CHARTER.       1204—1291.  851 

of  Balliol  gave  a  new  force  to  his  claims  upon  the  crown, 
and  the  discovery  of  an  intrigue  which  he  had  set  on 
foot  with  the  Bishop  of  St.  Andrews  so  roused  Edward's 
jealousy  that  Bruce  fled  for  his  life  across  the  border. 
Early  in  1306  he  met  Comyn,  the  Lord  of  Badenoch,  to 
whose  treachery  he  attributed  the  disclosure  of  his  plans, 
in  the  church  of  the  Grey  Friars  at  Dumfries,  and  after 
the  interchange  of  a  few  hot  words  struck  him  with  his 
dagger  to  the  ground.  It  was  an  outrage  that  admitted 
of  no  forgiveness,  and  Bruce  for  very  safetjr  was  forced 
to  assume  the  Crown  six  weeks  after  in  the  Abbey  of 
Scone.  The  news  roused  Scotland  again  to  arms,  and 
summoned  Edward  to  a  fresh  contest  with  his  un- 
conquerable foe.  But  the  murder  of  Comyn  had  changed 
the  King's  mood  to  a  terrible  pitilessness.  He  threatened 
death  against  all  concerned  in  the  outrage,  and  exposed 
the  Countess  of  Buchan,  who  had  set  the  crown  on 
Bruce's  head,  in  a  cage  or  open  chamber  built  for  the 
purpose  in  one  of  the  towers  of  Berwick.  At  the  solemn 
feast  which  celebrated  his  son's  knighthood  Edward 
vowed  on  the  swan  which  formed  the  chief  dish  at  the 
banquet  to  devote  the  rest  of  his  days  to  exact  vengeance 
from  the  murderer  himself.  But  even  at  the  moment  of 
the  vow  Bruce  was  already  flying  for  his  life  to  the 
western  islands.  "  Henceforth,"  he  said  to  his  wife  at 
their  coronation,  "  thou  art  Queen  of  Scotland  and  I 
King."  "  1  fear,"  replied  Mary  Bruce,  "  we  are  only 
playing  at  royalty  like  children  in  their  games."  The 
play  was  soon  turned  into  bitter  earnest.  A  small 
English  force  under  Aymer  de  Valence  sufficed  to  rout 
the  disorderly  levies  which  gathered  round  the  new 
monarch,  and  the  flight  of  Bruce  left  his  followers  at 
Edward's  mercy.  Noble  after  noble  was  sent  to  the 
block.  The  Earl  of  Athole  pleaded  kindred  with  royalty. 
"His  only  privilege,"  burst  forth  the  King,  "shall  be 
that  of  being  hanged  on  a  higher  gallows  than  the  rest." 
Knights  and  priests  were  strung  up  side  by  side  by  the 
English  justiciaries ;  while  the  wife  and  daughters  of 
Robert  Bruce  were  flung  into  Edward's  prisons.  Bruce 
himself  had  offered  to  capitulate  to  Prince  Edward. 


352  HISTORY   OF    THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

But  the  offer  only  roused  the  old  King  to  fury.  "Who 
is  so  bold,"  he  cried,  u  as  to  treat  with  our  traitors 
without  our  knowledge  ?  "  and  rising  from  his  sick  bed 
he  led  his  army  northwards  in  the  summer  of  1307  to 
complete  the  conquest.  But  the  hand  of  death  was  upon 
him,  and  in  the  very  sight  of  Scotland  the  old  man 
breathed  his  last  at  Burgh-upoii-sands. 


BOOK  IV. 

THE  PARLIAMENT. 

1307—1461. 


AUTHORITIES  FOR  BOOK  IV. 


FOR  Edward  the  Second  we  have  three  important  contemporaries  : 
Thomas  de  la  More,  Trokelowe's  Annals,  and  the  life  by  a  monk  of 
Malmesbury,  printed  by  Hearne.  The  sympathies  of  the  first  are  with 
the  King,  those  of  the  last  two  with  the  Barons.  Murimuth's  short 
Chronicle  is  also  contemporary.  John  Barbour's  "Bruce,"  the  great 
legendary  storehouse  for  his  hero's  adventures,  is  historically  worth- 
less. 

Important  as  it  is,  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  is  by  no  means 
fortunate  in  its  annalists.  The  concluding  part  of  the  Chronicle  of 
Walter  of  Hemingford  or  Heminburgh  seems  to  have  been  jotted  down 
as  news  of  the  passing  events  reached  its  author  :  it  ends  at  the  battle 
of  Crecy.  Hearue  has  published  another  contemporary  account,  that 
of  Robert  of  Avesbury,  which  closes  in  1356.  A  third  account  by 
Knyghton,  a  canon  of  Leicester,  will  be  found  in  the  collection  of 
Twysden.  At  the  end  of  this  century  and  the  beginning  of  the  next 
the  annals  which  had  been  carried  on  in  the  Abbey  of  St.  Albans  were 
thrown  together  by  Walsingham  in  the  "  Histoda  Anglicana"  which 
bears  his  name,  a  compilation  whose  history  may  be  found  in  the  pref- 
aces to  the  "  Chronica  Monasterii  S.  Albani"  issued  in  the  Rolls 
Series.  An  anonymous  chronicler,  whose  work  is  printed  in  the  22d 
volume  of  the  "  Archseologia,"  has  given  us  the  story  of  the  Good  Par- 
liament, another  account  is  preserved  in  the  "  Chronica  Anglise  from 
1328  to  1388,"  published  in  the  Rolls  Series,  and  fresh  light  has  been 
recently  thrown  on  the  time  by  the  publication  of  a  Chronicle  by  Adam 
of  Usk  which  extends  from  1377  to  1404.  Fortunately  the  scantiness 
of  historical  narrative  is  compensated  by  the  growing  fulness  and 
abundance  of  our  State  papers.  Rymer's  Foedera  is  rich  in  diplomatic 
and  other  documents  for  this  period,  and  from  this  time  we  have  a 
storehouse  of  political  and  social  information  iu  the  Parliamentary 
Rolls. 

For  the  French  war  itself  our  primary  authority  is  the  Chronicle  of 
Jehan  le  Bel,  a  canon  of  the  church  of  St.  Lambert  of  Liege,  who  him- 
self served  in  Edward's  campaign  against  the  Scots  and  spent  the  rest 
of  his  life  at  the  court  of  John  of  Hainault.  Up  to  the  Treaty  of  Bre- 
tigny,  where  it  closes,  Froissart  has  done  little  more  than  copy  this 
work,  making,  however,  large  additions  from  his  own  inquiries,  espe- 
cially in  the  Flemish  and  Breton  campaigns  and  in  the  account  of 
Crecy.  Froissart  was  himself  a  Haiiiaulter  of  Valenciennes  ;  he  held 
a  post  in  Queen  Philippa's  household  from  1361  to  1369,  and  under 
this  influence  produced  in  1373  the  first  edition  of  his  well-known 
Chronicle.  A  later  edition  is  far  less  English  in  tone,  and  a.  third  ver- 
sion, begun  by  him  in  his  old  age  after  long  absence  from  England,  is 
distinctly  French  in  its  sympathies.  Froissart' s  vivacity  and  pictur- 
esqueness  blind  us  to  the  inaccuracy  of  his  details  ;  as  an  historical 
authority  he  is  of  little  value.  The  "Fasciculi  Zizaniorum"  in  the 
Rolls  Series  with  the  documents  appended  to  it  is  a  work  of  primary 

C355) 


856  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

authority  for  the  history  of  Wyclif  and  his  followers  :  a  selection  from 
his  English  tracts  has  been  made  by  Mr.  T.  Arnold  for  the  University 
of  Oxford,  which  has  also  published  his  "  Trias."  The  version  of  the 
Bible  that  bears  his  name  has  been  edited  with  a  valuable  preface  by 
the  Rev.  J.  Forshall  and  Sir  F.  Madden.  William  Longland's  poem, 
"  The  Complaint  of  Piers  the  Ploughman  "  (edited  by  Mr.  Skeat  for 
the  Early  English  Text  Society),  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  social 
state  of  England  after  the  Treaty  of  Bretigny. 

The  "Annals  of  Richard  the  Second  and  Henry  the  Fourth,"  now 
published  by  the  Master  of  the  Rolls,  are  our  main  authority  for  the 
period  which  follows  Edward's  death.  They  serve  as  the  basis  of  the  St. 
Alban's  compilation  which  bears  the  name  of  Walsingham,  and  from 
which  the  "  Life  of  Richard,"  by  a  monk  of  Evesham,  is  for  the  most 
part  derived.  The  same  violent  Lancastrian  sympathy  runs  through 
Walsingham  and  the  fifth  book  of  Knygh  ton's  Chronicle.  The  French 
authorities  on  the  other  hand  are  vehemently  on  Richard's  side.  Frois- 
sart,  who  ends  at  this  time,  is  supplemented  by  the  metrical  history  of 
Creton  ("  Archseologia,"  vol.  xx. ),  and  by  the  "  Chronique  de  la  Tra'ison 
et  Mort  de  Richart"  (English  Historical  Society),  both  works  of  French 
authors  and  published  in  France  in  the  time  of  Henry  the  Fourth, 
probably  with  the  aim  of  arousing  French  feeling  against  the  House  of 
Lancaster  and  the  war-policy  which  it  had  revived.  The  popular  feel- 
ing in  England  may  be  seen  in  "  Political  Songs  from  Edward  III.  to 
Richard  III."  (Rolls  Series).  A  poem  on  "  The  Deposition  of  Richard 
II."  which  has  been  published  by  the  Camden  Society  is  now  ascribed 
to  William  Longland. 

With  Henry  the  Fifth  our  historic  materials  become  more  abundant. 
We  have  the  "Acta  Henrici  Quinti"  by  Titus  Livius,  a  chaplain  in 
the  royal  army  ;  a  life  by  Elmham,  prior  of  Lenton,  simpler  in  style 
but  identical  in  arrangement  and  facts  with  the  former  work  ;  a  biog- 
raphy by  Robert  Redman  ;  a  metrical  chronicle  by  Elmham  (published 
in  Rolls  Series  in  "  Memorials  of  Henry  the  Fifth")  ;  and  the  meagre 
chronicles  of  Hardyng  and  Otterbourne.  The  King's  Norman  cam- 
paigns may  be  studied  in  M.  Puiseux's  "Siege  de  Rouen"  (Caen, 
1867).  The  "Wars  of  the  English  in  France"  and  Blondel's  work 
"De  Reductione  Normanniae"  (both  in  Rolls  Series)  give  ample  in- 
formation on  the  military  side  of  this  and  the  next  reign.  But  with 
the  accession  of  Henry  the  Sixth  we  again  enter  on  a  period  of  singular 
dearth  in  its  historical  authorities.  The  "  Proces  de  Jeanne  d'Arc" 
(published  by  the  Socie"t£  de  1'Histoire  de  France)  is  the  only  real  au- 
thority for  her  history.  For  English  affairs  we  are  reduced  to  the 
meagre  accounts  of  William  of  Worcester,  of  the  Continuator  of  the 
Crowland  Chronicle,  and  of  Fabyan.  Fabyan  is  a  London  alderman 
with  a  strong  bias  in  favor  of  the  House  of  Lancaster,  and  his  work  is 
useful  for  London  only.  The  Continuator  is  one  of  the  best  of  his 
class  ;  and  though  connected  with  the  house  of  York,  the  date  of  his 
work,  which  appeared  soon  after  Bosworth  Field,  makes  him  fairly 
impartial  ;  but  he  is  sketchy  and  deficient  in  information.  The  more 
copious  narrative  of  Polydore  Vergil  is  far  superior  to  these  in  literary 
ability,  but  of  later  date,  and  strongly  Lancastrian  in  tone.  For  the 
struggle  between  Edward  and  Warwick,  the  valuable  narrative  of  "  The 
Arrival  of  Edward  the  Fourth  "  (Camden  Society)  may  be  taken  as  the 
official  account  on  the  royal  side.  The  Paston  Letters  are  the  first  in- 
stance in  English  history  of  a  family  correspondence,  and  throw  great 
light  on  the  social  condition  of  the  time. 


CHAPTER  I. 

EDWARD   II. 

1307—1327. 

IN  his  calling  together  the  estates  of  the  realm  Edward 
the  First  determined  the  course  of  English  history.  From 
the  first  moment  of  its  appearance  the  Parliament  be- 
came the  centre  of  English  affairs.  The  hundred  years 
indeed  which  follow  its  assembly  at  Westminster  saw 
its  rise  into  a  power  which  checked  and  overawed  the 
Crown. 

Of  the  Kings  in  whose  reigns  the  Parliament  gathered 
this  mighty  strength  not  one  was  likely  to  look  with  in- 
difference on  the  growth  of  a  rival  authority,  and  the 
bulk  of  them  were  men  who  in  other  times  would  have 
roughly  checked  it.  What  held  their  hand  was  the  need 
of  the  Crown.  The  century  and  a  half  that  followed  the 
gathering  of  the  estates  at  Westminster  was  a  time  of 
almost  continual  war,  and  of  the  financial  pressure  that 
springs  from  war.  It  was  indeed  war  that  had  gathered 
them.  In  calling  his  Parliament  Edward  the  First  sought 
mainly  an  effective  means  of  procuring  supplies  for  that 
policy  of  national  consolidation  which  had  triumphed  in 
Wales  and  which  seemed  to  be  triumphing  in  Scotland. 
But  the  triumph  in  Scotland  soon  proved  a  delusive  one, 
and  the  strife  brought  wider  strifes  in  its  train.  When 
Edward  wrung  from  Balliol  an  acknowledgment  of  his 
suzerainty  he  foresaw  little  of  the  war  with  France,  the 
war  with  Spain,  the  quarrel  with  the  Papacy,  the  up- 
growth of  social,  of  political,  of  religious  revolution  within 
England  itself,  of  which  that  acknowledgment  was  to  be 

(367) 


358  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  prelude.  But  the  thicker  troubles  gathered  round 
England  the  more  the  royal  treasury  was  drained,  and 
now  that  arbitrary  taxation  was  impossible  the  one  means 
of  filling  it  lay  in  a  summons  of  the  Houses.  The  Crown 
was  chained  to  the  Parliament  by  a  tie  of  absolute  need. 
From  the  first  moment  of  parliamentary  existence  the 
life  and  power  of  the  estates  assembled  at  Westminster 
hung  on  the  question  of  supplies.  So  long  as  war  went" 
on  no  ruler  could  dispense  with  the  grants  which  fed  the 
war  and  which  Parliament  alone  could  afford.  But  it 
was  impossible  to  procure  supplies  save  by  redressing  the 
grievances  of  which  Parliament  complained  and  by  grant- 
ing the  powers  which  Parliament  demanded.  It  was  in 
vain  that  King  after  King,  conscious  that  war  bound  them 
to  the  Parliament,  strove  to  rid  themselves  of  the  war. 
So  far  was  the  ambition  of  our  rulers  from  being  the  cause 
of  the  long  struggle  that,  save  in  the  one  case  of  Henry 
the  Fifth,  the  desperate  effort  of  every  ruler  was  to  arrive 
at  peace.  Forced  as  they  were  to  fight,  their  restless  di- 
plomacy strove  to  draw  from  victory  as  from  defeat  a 
means  of  escape  from  the  strife  that  was  enslaving  the 
Crown.  The  royal  Council,  the  royal  favorites,  were 
always  on  the  side  of  peace.  But  fortunately  for  English 
freedom  peace  was  impossible.  The  pride  of  the  English 
people,  the  greed  of  France,  foiled  every  attempt  at  ac- 
commodation. The  wisest  ministers  sacrificed  themselves 
in  vain.  King  after  King  patched  up  truces  which  never 
grew  into  treaties,  and  concluded  marriages  which  brought 
fresh  discord  instead  of  peace.  War  went  ceaselessly  on, 
and  with  the  march  of  war  went  on  the  ceaseless  growth 
of  the  Parliament.. 

The  death  of  Edward  the  First  arrested  only  for  a  mo- 
ment the  advance  of  his  army  to  the  north.  The  Earl  of 
Pembroke  led  it  across  the  border,  and  found  himself 
master  of  the  country  without  a  blow.  Bruce's  career 
became  that  of  a  desperate  adventurer,  for  even  the  High- 
land chiefs  in  whose  fastnesses  he  found  shelter  were  bit- 
terly hostile  to  one  who  claimed  to  be  King  of  their  foes 
in  the  Lowlands.  It  was  this  adversity  that  transformed 
the  murderer  of  Comyn  into  the  noble  leader  of  a  nation's 


THE   PAKLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  359 

cause.  Strong  and  of  commanding  presence,  brave  and 
genial  in  temper,  Bruce  bore  the  hardships  of  his  career 
with  a  courage  and  hopefulness  that  never  failed.  In  the 
legends  that  clustered  round  his  name  we  see  him  listen- 
ing in  Highland  glens  to  the  bay  of  the  bloodhounds  on 
his  track,  or  holding  a  pass  single-handed  against  a  crowd 
of  savage  clansmen.  Sometimes  the  small  band  which 
clung  to  him  were  forced  to  support  themselves  by  hunt- 
ing and  fishing,  sometimes  to  break  up  for  safety  as  their 
enemies  tracked  them  to  their  lair.  Bruce  himself  had 
more  than  once  to  fling  off  his  coat-of-mail  and  scramble 
barefoot  for  very  life  up  the  crags.  Little  by  little,  how- 
ever, the  dark  sky  cleared.  The  English  pressure  relaxed. 
James  Douglas,  the  darling  of  Scottish  story,  was  the  first 
of  the  Lowland  Barons  to  rally  to  the  Bruce,  and  his 
daring  gave  heart  to  the  King's  cause.  Once  he  sur- 
prised his  own  house,  which  had  been  given  to  an  English- 
man, ate  the  dinner  which  was  prepared  for  its  new 
owner,  slew  his  captives,  and  tossed  their  bodies  on  to  a 
pile  of  wood  at  the  castle  gate.  Then  he  staved  in  the 
wine-vats  that  the  wine  might  mingle  with  their  blood, 
and  set  house  and  wood-pile  on  fire. 

A  ferocity  like  this  degraded  everywhere  the  work  of 
freedom ;  but  the  revival  of  the  country  went  steadily 
on.  Pembroke  and  the  English  forces  were  in  fact  par- 
alyzed by  a  strife  which  had  broken  out  in  England 
between  the  new  King  and  his  baronage.  The  moral 
purpose  which  had  raised  his  father  to  grandeur  was 
wholly  wanting  in  Edward  the  Second ;  he  was  showy, 
idle,  and  stubborn  in  temper ;  but  he  was  far  from  being 
destitute  of  the  intellectual  quickness  which  seemed  in- 
born in  the  Plantagenets.  He  had  no  love  for  his  father, 
but  he  had  seen  him  in  the  later  years  of  his  reign 
struggling  against  the  pressure  of  the  baronage,  evading 
his  pledges  as  to  taxation,  and  procuring  absolution  from 
his  promise  to  observe  the  clauses  added  to  the  Charter. 
The  son's  purpose  was  the  same,  that  of  throwing  off 
what  he  looked  on  as  the  yoke  of  the  baronage ;  but  the 
means  by  which  he  designed  to  bring  about  his  purpose 
was  the  choice  of  a  minister  wholly  dependent  on  the 


86  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

Crown.  We  have  already  noticed  the  change  by  which 
the  "clerks  of  the  King's  chapel,"  who  had  been  the 
ministers  of  arbitrary  government  under  the  Norman  and 
Angevin  sovereigns,  had  been  quietly  superseded  by  the 
prelates  and  lords  of  the  Continual  Council.  At  the 
close  of  the  late  reign  a  direct  demand  on  the  part  of  the 
barons  to  nominate  the  great  officers  of  state  had  been 
curtly  rejected ;  but  the  royal  choice  had  been  practically 
limited  in  the  selection  of  its  ministers  to  the  class  of 
prelates  and  nobles,  and  however  closely  connected  with 
royalty  they  might  be  such  officers  always  to  a  great  ex- 
tent snared  the  feelings  and  opinions  of  their  order.  The 
aim  of  the  young  King  seems  to  have  been  to  undo  the 
change  which  had  been  silently  brought  about,  and 
to  imitate  the  policy  of  the  contemporary  sovereigns  of 
France  by  choosing  as  his  ministers  men  of  an  inferior 
position,  wholly  dependent  on  the  crown  for  their  power, 
and  representatives  of  nothing  but  the  policy  and  inter- 
ests of  their  master.  Piers  Gaveston,  a  foreigner  sprung 
from  a  family  of  Guienne,  had  been  his  friend  and  com- 
panion during  his  father's  reign,  at  the  close  of  which  he 
had  been  banished  from  the  realm  for  his  share  in  in- 
trigues which  divided  Edward  from  his  son.  At  the 
accession  of  the  new  king  he  was  at  once  recalled,  created 
Earl  of  Cornwall,  and  placed  at  the  head  of  the  adminis- 
tration. When  Edward  crossed  the  sea  to  wed  Isabella 
of  France,  the  daughter  of  Philip  the  Fair,  a  marriage 
planned  by  his  father  to  provide  against  any  further 
intervention  of  France  in  his  difficulties  with  Scotland, 
the  new  minister  was  left  as  Regent  in  his  room.  The 
offence  given  by  this  rapid  promotion  was  embittered  by 
his  personal  temper.  Gay,  genial,  thriftless,  Gaveston 
showed  in  his  first  acts  the  quickness  and  audacity  of 
Southern  Gaul.  The  older  ministers  were  dismissed,  all 
claims  of  precedence  or  inheritance  were  set  aside  in  the 
distribution  of  offices  at  the  coronation,  while  taunts  and 
defiances  goaded  the  proud  baronage  to  fury.  The  favor- 
ite was  a  fine  soldier,  and  his  lance  unhorsed  his  oppo- 
nents in  tourney  after  tourney.  His  reckless  wit  flung 
nicknames  about  the  Court,  the  Earl  of  Lancaster  was 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  361 

"the  Actor,"  Pembroke  "the  Jew,"  Warwick  "the 
Black  Dog."  But  taunt  and  defiance  broke  helplessly 
against  the  iron  mass  of  the  baronage.  After  a  few 
months  of  power  the  formal  demand  of  the  Parliament 
for  his  dismissal  could  not  be  resisted,  and  in  May,  1308, 
Gaveston  was  formally  banished  from  the  realm. 

But  Edward  was  far  from  abandoning  his  favorite.  In 
Ireland  he  was  unfettered  by  the  Baronage,  and  here 
Gaveston  found  a  refuge  as  the  King's  Lieutenant  while 
Edward  sought  to  obtain  his  recall  by  the  intervention 
of  France  and  the  Papacy.  But  the  financial  pressure 
of  the  Scotch  war  again  brought  the  King  and  his  Par- 
liament together  in  the  spring  of  1309.  It  was  only  by 
conceding  the  rights  which  his  father  had  sought  to  es- 
tablish of  imposing  import  duties  on  the  merchants  by 
their  own  assent  that  he  procured  a  subsidy.  The  firm- 
ness of  the  baronage  sprang  from  their  having  found  a 
head. .  In  no  point  had  the  policy  of  Henry  the  Third 
more  utterly  broken  down  than  in  his  attempt  to  weaken 
the  power  of  the  nobles  by  filling  the  great  earldoms 
with  kinsmen  of  the  royal  house.  He  had  made  Simon 
of  Montfort  his  brother-in-law  only  to  furnish  a  leader  to 
the  nation  in  the  Barons'  war.  In  loading  his  second 
son,  Edmund  Crouchback,  with  honors  and  estates,  he 
raised  a  family  to  greatness  which  overawed  the  Crown. 
Edmund  had  been  created  Earl  of  Lancaster ;  after 
Evesham  he  had  received  the  forfeited  Earldom  of  Lei- 
cester ;  he  had  been  made  Earl  of  Derby  on  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  house  of  Ferrers.  His  son,  Thomas  of  Lan- 
caster, was  the  son-in-law  of  Henry  de  Lacy,  and  was 
soon  to  add  to  these  lordships  the  Earldom  of  Lincoln. 
And  to  the  weight  of  these  great  baronies  was  added  his 
royal  blood.  The  father  of  Thomas  had  been  a  titular 
King  of  Sicily.  His  mother  was  dowager  Queen  of  Na- 
varre, his  half-sister  by  the  mother's  side  was  wife  of  the 
French  King  Philip  le  Bel  and  mother  of  the  English 
Queen  Isabella.  He  was  himself  a  grandson  of  Henry 
the  Third  and  not  far  from  the  succession  of  the  throne. 
Had  Earl  Thomas  been  a  wiser  and  a  nobler  man,  his 
adhesion  to  the  cause  of  the  baronage  might  have  guided 


362  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  King  into  a  really  national  policy.  As  it  was  his 
weight  proved  irresistible.  When  Edward  at  the  close 
of  the  Parliament  recalled  Gaveston  the  Earl  of  Lan- 
caster withdrew  from  the  royal  Council,  and  a  Parliament 
which  met  in  the  spring  of  1310  resolved  that  the  affairs 
of  the  realm  should  be  entrusted  for  a  year  to  a  body  of 
twenty-one  "  Ordainers  "  with  Archbishop  Winchelsey 
at  their  head. 

Edward  with  Gaveston  withdrew  sullenly  to  the  North. 
A  triumph  in  Scotland  would  have  given  him  strength 
to  baffle  the  Ordainers,  but  he  had  little  of  his  father's 
military  skill,  the  wasted  country  made  it  hard  to  keep 
an  army  together,  and  after  a  fruitless  campaign  he  fell 
back  to  his  southern  realm  to  meet  the  Parliament  of 
1311  and  the  '•  Ordinances  "  which  the  twent3T-one  laid 
before  it.  By  this  long  and  important  statute  Gaveston 
was  banished,  other  advisers  were  driven  from  the  Coun- 
cil, and  the  Florentine  bankers  whose  loans  had  enabled 
Edward  to  hold  the  baronage  at  bay  sent  out  of  the 
realm.  The  customs  duties  imposed  by  Edward  the  First 
were  declared  to  be  illegal.  Its  administrative  provisions 
showed  the  relations  which  the  barons  sought  to  estab- 
lish between  the  new  Parliament  and  the  Crown.  Par- 
liaments were  to  be  called  every  year,  and  in  these  as- 
semblies the  King's  servants  were  to  be  brought,  if  need 
were,  to  justice.  The  great  officers  of  state  were  to  be 
appointed  with  the  counsel  and  consent  of  the  baronage, 
and  to  be  sworn  in  Parliament.  The  same  consent  of 
the  barons  in  Parliament  was  to  be  needful  ere  the  King 
could  declare  war  or  absent  himself  from  the  realm.  As 
the  Ordinances  show,  the  baronage  still  looked  on  Par- 
liament rather  as  a  political  organization  of  the  nobles 
than  as  a  gathering  of  the  three  Estates  of  the  realm, 
The  lower  clergy  pass  unnoticed  ;  the  Commons  are  re- 
garded as  mere  tax-payers  whose  part  was  still  confined 
to  the  presentation  of  petitions  of  grievances  and  the 
grant  of  money.  But  even  in  this  imperfect  fashion  the 
Parliament  was  a  real  representation  of  the  country. 
The  barons  no  longer  depended  for  their  force  on  the 
rise  of  some  active  leader,  or  gathered  in  exceptional 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  363 

assemblies  to  wrest  reforms  from  the  Crown  by  threat  of 
war.  Their  action  was  made  regular  and  legal.  Even 
the  Commons  took  little  part  in  forming  decisions ; 
their  force  when  formed  hung  on  the  assent  of  the  knights 
and  burgesses  to  them ;  and  the  grant  which  alone  could 
purchase  from  the  Crown  the  concessions  which  the 
Baronage  demanded  lay  absolutely  within  the  control  of 
the  Third  Estate.  It  was  this  which  made  the  King's 
struggles  so  fruitless.  He  assented  to  the  Ordinances, 
and  then  withdrawing  to  the  North  recalled  Gaveston 
and  annulled  them.  But  Winchelsey  excommunicated 
the  favorite  and  the  barons,  gathering  in  arms,  besieged 
him  in  Scarborough.  His  surrender  in  May,  1312,  ended 
the  strife.  The  "  Black  Dog  "  of  Warwick  had  sworn  that 
the  favorite  should  feel  his  teeth  •  and  Gaveston  flung 
himself  in  vain  at  the  feet  of  the  Earl  of  Lancaster, 
praying  for  pity  "  from  his  gentle  lord."  In  defiance  of 
the  terms  of  his  capitulation  he  was  beheaded  on  Black- 
low  Hill. 

The  King's  burst  of  grief  was  as  fruitless  as  his  threats 
of  vengeance ;  a  feigned  submission  of  the  conquerors 
completed  the  royal  humiliation,  and  the  barons  knelt 
before  Edward  in  Westminster  Hall  to  receive  a  pardon 
which  seemed  the  death-blow  of  the  royal  power.  But  if 
Edward  was  powerless  to  conquer  the  baronage  he  could 
still  by  evading  the  observances  of  the  Ordinances  throw 
the  whole  realm  into  confusion.  The  two  years  that 
follow  Gaveston's  death  are  among  the  darkest  in  our 
history.  A  terrible  succession  of  famines  intensified  the 
suffering  which  sprang  from  the  utter  absence  of  all  rule 
as  dissension  raged  between  the  barons  and  the  King. 
At  last  a  common  peril  drew  both  parties  together.  The 
Scots  had  profited  by  the  English  troubles,  and  Bruce's 
"harrying  of  Buchan"  after  his  defeat  of  its  Earl,  who 
had  joined  the  English  army,  fairly  turned  the  tide  of 
success  in  his  favor.  Edinburgh,  Roxburgh,  Perth,  and 
most  of  the  Scotch  fortresses  fell  one  by  one  into  King 
Robert's  hands.  The  clergy  met  in  council  and  owned 
him  as  their  lawful  lord.  Gradually  the  Scotch  barons, 
who  still  held  to  the  English  cause,  were  coerced  into 


364  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

submission,  and  Bruce  found  himself  strong  enough  to 
invest  Stirling,  the  last  and  the  most  important  of  the 
Scotch  fortresses  which  held  out  for  Edward,  Stirling 
was  in  fact  the  key  of  Scotland,  and  its  danger  roused 
England  out  of  its  civil  strife  to  an  effort  for  the  re- 
covery of  its  prey.  At  the  close  of  1313  Edward  recog- 
nized the  Ordinances,  and  a  liberal  grant  from  the  Par- 
liament enabled  him  to  take  the  field.  Lancaster  indeed 
still  held  aloof  on  the  ground  that  the  King  had  not 
sought  the  assent  of  Parliament  to  the  war,  but  thirty 
thousand  men  followed  Edward  to  the  North,  and  a  host 
of  wild  marauders  were  summoned  from  Ireland  and 
Wales.  The  army  which  Bruce  gathered  to  oppose  this 
inroad  was  formed  almost  wholly  of  footmen,  and  was 
stationed  to  the  south  of  Stirling  on  a  rising  ground 
flanked  by  a  little  brook,  the  Bannockburn,  which  gave 
its  name  to  the  engagement.  The  battle  took  place  on 
the  twenty-fourth  of  June,  1314.  Again  two  systems  of 
warfare  were  brought  face  to  face  as  they  had  been 
brought  at  Falkirk,  for  Robert  like  Wallace  drew  up  his 
forces  in  hollow  squares  or  circles  of  spearmen.  The 
English  were  dispirited  at  the  very  outset  by  the  failure 
of  an  attempt  to  relieve  Stirling  and  by  the  issue  of 
a  single  combat  between  Bruce  and  Henry  de  Bohun, 
a  knight  who  bore  down  upon  him  as  he  was  riding 
peacefully  along  the  front  of  his  army.  Robert  was 
mounted  on  a  small  hackney  and  held  only  a  light  battle- 
axe  in  his  hand,  but  warding  off  his  opponent's  spear  he 
cleft  his  skull  with  so  terrible  a  blow  that  the  handle  of 
his  axe  was  shattered  in  his  grasp.  At  the  opening  of 
the  battle  the  English  archers  were  thrown  forward  to 
rake  the  Scottish  squares,  but  they  were  without  support 
and  were  easily  dispersed  by  a  handful  of  horse  whom 
Bruce  held  in  reserve  for  the  purpose.  The  body  of  men- 
at-arms  next  flung  themselves  on  the  Scottish  front,  but 
their  charge  was  embarrassed  by  the  narrow  space  along 
which  the  line  was  forced  to  move,  and  the  steady  resist- 
ance of  the  squares  soon  threw  the  knighthood  into  dis- 
order. "  The  horses  that  were  stickit,"  says  an  exulting 
Scotch  writer,  "  rushed  and  reeled  right  rudely."  In  the 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  865 

moment  of  failure  the  sight  of  a  body  of  camp-followers, 
whom  they  mistook  for  reinforcements  to  the  enemy, 
spread  panic  through  the  English  host.  It  broke  in  a 
headlong  rout.  Its  thousands  of  brilliant  horsemen  were 
soon  floundering  in  pits  which  guarded  the  level  ground 
to  Bruce's  left,  or  riding  in  wild  haste  for  the  border. 
Few  however  were  fortunate  enough  to  reach  it.  Edward 
himself,  with  a  body  of  five  hundred  knights,  succeeded 
in  escaping  to  Dunbar  and  the  sea.  But  the  flower  of 
his  knighthood  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors,  while 
the  Irishry  and  the  footmen  were  ruthlessly  cut  down  by 
the  country  folk  as  they  fled.  For  centuries  to  come  the 
rich  plunder  of  the  English  camp  left  its  traces  on  the 
treasure-rolls  and  the  vestment-rolls  of  castle  and  abbey 
throughout  the  Lowlands. 

Bannockburn  left  Bruce  the  master  of  Scotland :  but 
terrible  as  the  blow  was  England  could  not  humble  her- 
self to  relinquish  her  claim  on  the  Scottish  crown. 
Edward  was  eager  indeed  for  a  truce,  but  with  equal 
firmness  Bruce  refused  all  negotiation  while  the  royal 
title  was  withheld  from  him  and  steadily  pushed  on  the 
recovery  of  his  southern  dominions.  His  progress  was 
unhindered.  Bannockburn  left  Edward  powerless,  and 
Lancaster,  at  the  head  of  the  Ordainers,  became  supreme. 
But  it  was  still  impossible  to  trust  the  King  or  to  act 
with  him,  and  in  the  dead-lock  of  both  parties  the  Scots 
plundered  as  they  would.  Their  ravages  in  the  North 
brought  shame  on  England  such  as  it  had  never  known. 
As  last  Bruce's  capture  of  Berwick  in  the  spring  of  1318 
forced  the  King  to  give  way.  The  Ordinances  were  for- 
mally accepted,  an  amnesty  granted,  and  a  small  number 
of  peers  belonging  to  the  barons'  party  added  to  the  great 
officers  of  state.  Had  a  statesman  been  at  the  head  of 
the  baronage  the  weakness  of  Edward  might  have  now 
been  turned  to  good  purpose.  But  the  character  of  the 
Earl  o|  Lancaster  seems  to  have  fallen  far  beneath  the 
greatness  of  his  position.  Distrustful  of  his  cousin,  yet 
himself  incapable  of  governing,  he  stood  sullenly  aloof 
from  the  royal  Council  and  the  royal  armies,  and  Edward 
was  able  to  lay  his  failure  in  recovering  Berwick  during 


866  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  campaign  of  1319  to  the  Earl's  charge.  His  influence 
over  the  country  was  sensibly  weakened  ;  and  in  this 
weakness  the  new  advisers  on  whom  the  king  was  lean- 
ing saw  a  hope  of  destroying  his  power.  These  were  a 
younger  and  elder  Hugh  Le  Despenser,  son  and  grandson 
of  the  Justiciar  who  had  fallen  beside  Earl  Simon  at 
Evesham.  Greedy  and  ambitious  as  they  may  have  been, 
they  were  able  men,  and  their  policy  was  of  a  higher 
stamp  than  the  wilful  defiance  of  Gaveston.  It  lay,  if 
we  may  gather  it  from  the  faint  indications  which  remain, 
in  a  frank  recognition  of  the  power  of  the  three  Estates 
as  opposed  to  the  separate  action  of  the  baronage.  The 
rise  of  the  younger  Hugh,  on  whom  the  King  bestowed 
the  county  of  Glamorgan  with  the  hand  of  one  of  its 
coheiresses,  a  daughter  of  Earl  Gilbert  of  Gloucester, 
was  rapid  enough  to  excite  general  jealousy ;  and  in  1321 
Lancaster  found  little  difficulty  in  extorting  by  force  of 
arms  his  exile  from  the  kingdom.  But  the  tide  of  popular 
sympathy  was  already  wavering,  and  it  was  turned  to 
the  royal  cause  by  an  insult  offered  to  the  Queen,  against 
whom  Lady  Badlesmere  closed  the  doors  of  Ledes  Castle. 
The  unexpected  energy  shown  by  Edward  in  avenging 
this  insult  gave  fresh  strength  to  his  cause.  At  the  open- 
ing of  1322  he  found  himself  strong  enough  to  recall  De- 
spenser, and  when  Lancaster  convoked  the  baronage  to 
force  him  again  into  exile,  the  weakness  of  their  party  was 
shown  by  some  negotiations  into  which  the  Earl  entered 
with  the  Scots  and  by  his  precipitate  retreat  to  the  north 
on  the  advance  of  the  royal  army.  At  Boroughbridge  his 
forces  were  arrested  and  dispersed,  and  Thomas  himself, 
brought  captive  before  Edward  at  Pontefract,  was  tried 
and  condemned  to  death  as  a  traitor.  "  Have  mercy  on 
me,  King  of  Heaven,"  cried  Lancaster,  as,  mounted  on 
a  gray  pony  without  a  bridle,  he  was  hurried  to  execu- 
tion, "  for  my  earthly  King  has  forsaken  me."  His  death 
was  followed  by  that  of  a  number  of  his  adherents  and 
by  the  captivity  of  others ;  while  a  Parliament  at  York 
annulled  the  proceeding  against  the  Despensers  and  re- 
pealed the  Ordinances. 

It  is  to  this  Parliament,  however,  and  perhaps  to  the  vie- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  367 

torious  confidence  of  the  royalists,  that  we  owe  the  famous 
provisions  which  reveals  the  policy  of  the  Despensers,  the 
provision  that  all  laws  concerning  "  the  estate  of  our 
Lord  the  King  and  his  heirs  or  for  the  estate  of  the  realm 
and  the  people  shall  be  treated,  accorded,  and  established 
in  Parliaments  by  our  Lord  the  King  and  by  the  consent 
of  the  prelates,  earls,  barons,  and  commonalty  of  the  realm 
according  as  hath  been  hitherto  accustomed."  It  would 
seem  from  the  tenor  of  this  remarkable  enactment  that 
much  of  the  sudden  revulsion  of  popular  feeling  had  been 
owing  to  the  assumption  of  all  legislative  action  by  the 
baronage  alone.  The  same  policy  was  seen  in  a  reissue 
in  the  form  of  a  royal  Ordinance  of  some  of  the  most 
beneficial  provisions  of  the  Ordinances  which  had  been 
formally  repealed.  But  the  arrogance  of  the  Despensers 
gave  new  offence ;  and  the  utter  failure  of  a  fresh  cam- 
paign against  Scotland  again  weakened  the  Crown.  The 
barbarous  forays  in  which  the  borderers  under  Earl 
Douglas  were  wasting  Northumberland  woke  a  general 
indignation ;  and  a  grant  from  the  Parliament  at  York 
enabled  Edward  to  march  with  a  great  army  to  the  North. 
But  Bruce  as  of  old  declined  an  engagement  till  the 
wasted  Lowlands  starved  the  invaders  into  a  ruinous  re- 
treat. The  failure  forced  England  in  the  spring^f  1323 
to  stoop  to  a  truce  for  thirteen  years,  in  the  negotiation  of 
which  Bruce  was  suffered  to  take  the  royal  title.  We  see 
in  this  act  of  the  Despensers  the  first  of  a  series  of  such 
attempts  by  which  minister  after  minister  strove  to  free 
the  Crown  from  the  bondage  under  which  the  war-pressure 
laid  it  to  the  growing  power  of  Parliament ;  but  it  ended 
as  these  after-attempts  ended,  only  in  the  ruin  of  the  coun- 
sellors who  planned  it.  The  pride  of  the  country  had 
beenrous'edby  the  struggle,  and  the  humiliation  of  such  a 
truce  robbed  the  Crown  of  its  temporary  popularity.  It 
led  the  way  to  the  sudden  catastrophe  which  closed  this 
disastrous  reign. 

In  his  struggle  with  the  Scots  Edward,  like  his  father, 
had  been  hampered  not  only  by  internal  divisions  but  by 
the  harassing  intervention  of  France.  The  rising  under 
Bruce  had  been  backed  by  French  aid  as  well  as  by  a 


HISTORY  OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

revival  of  the  old  quarrel  over  Guienne,  and  on  the 
accession  of  Charles  the  Fourth  in  1822  a  demand  of 
homage  for  Ponthieu  and  Gascony  called  Edward  over 
sea.  But  the  Despensers  dared  not  let  him  quit  the  realm, 
and  a  fresh  dispute  as  to  the  right  of  possession  in  the 
Agenois  brought  about  the  seizure  of  the  bulk  of  Gascony 
by  a  sudden  attack  on  the  part  of  the  French.  The 
quarrel  verged  upon  open  war,  and  to  close  it  Edward's 
Queen,  Isabella,  a  sister  of  the  French  King,  undertook 
in  1325  to  revisit  her  home  and  bring  about  a  treaty  of 
peace  between  the  two  countries.  Isabella  hated  the 
Despensers ;  she  was  alienated  from  her  husband ;  but 
hatred  and  alienation  were  as  yet  jealously  concealed. 
At  the  close  of  the  year  the  terms  of  peace  seemed  to  be 
arranged  ;  and  though  declining  to  cross  the  sea,  Edward 
evaded  the  difficulty  created  by  the  demand  for  personal 
homage  by  investing  his  son  with  the  Duchies  of 
Aquitaine  and  Gascony,  and  despatching  him  to  join  his 
mother  at  Paris.  The  boy  did  homage  to  King  Charles 
for  the  two  Duchies,  the  question  of  the  Agenois  being 
reserved  for  legal  decision,  and  Edward  at  once  recalled 
his  wife  and  son  to  England.  Neither  threats  nor  prayers 
however  could  induce  either  wife  or  child  to  return  to  his 
court.  Roger  Mortimer,  the  most  powerful  of  the  Marcher 
barons**and  a  deadly  foe  to  the  Despensers,  had  taken 
refuge  in  France  ;  and  his  influence  over  the  Queen  made 
her  the  centre  of  a  vast  conspiracy.  With  the  young 
Edward  in  her  hands  she  was  able  to  procure  soldiers 
from  the  Count  of  Hainault  by  promising  her  son's  hand 
to  his  daughter ;  the  Italian  bankers  supplied  funds ;  and 
after  a  year's  preparation  the  Queen  set  sail  in  the 
autumn  of  1326.  A  secret  conspiracy  of  the  baronage 
was  revealed  when  the  primate  and  nobles  hurried  to  her 
standard  on  her  landing  at  Orwell.  Deserted  by  all,  and 
repulsed  by  the  citizens  of  London  whose  aid  he  implored, 
the  King  fled  hastily  to  the  west  and  embarked  with  the 
Despensers  for  Lundy  Island,  which  Despenser  had  forti- 
fied as  a  possible  refuge ;  but  contrary  winds  flung  him 
again  on  the  Welsh  coast,  where  he  fell  into  the  hands  of 
Earl  Homy  of  Lancaster,  the  brother  of  the  Earl  whom 
they  had  slain.  The  younger  Despenser,  who  accom- 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  369 

panied  him,  was  at  once  hung  on  a  gibbet  fifty  feet  high, 
and  the  King  placed  in  ward  at  Kenilworth  till  his  fate 
could  be  decided  by  a  Parliament  summoned  for  that  pur- 
pose at  Westminster  in  January,  1327. 

The  peers  who  assembled  fearlessly  revived  the  con- 
stitutional usage  of  the  earlier  English  freedom,  and 
asserted  their  right  to  depose  a  King  who  had  proved 
himself  unworthy  to  rule.  Not  a  voice  was  raised  in 
Edward's  behalf,  and  only  four  prelates  protested  when 
the  young  Prince  was  proclaimed  King  by  acclamation 
and  presented  as  their  sovereign  to  the  multitudes  with- 
out. The  revolution  took  legal  form  in  a  bill  which 
charged  the  captive  monarch  with  indolence,  incapacity, 
the  loss  of  Scotland,  the  violation  of  his  coronation  oath 
and  oppression  of  the  Church  and  baronage  ;  and  on  the 
approval  of  this  it  was  resolved  that  the  reign  of  Edward 
of  Caernarvon  had  ceased  and  that  the  crown  had  passed 
to  his  son,  Edward  of  Windsor.  A  deputation  of  the 
Parliament  proceeded  to  Kenilworth  to  procure  the  as- 
sent of  the  discrowned  King  to  his  own  deposition,  and 
Edward,  "  clad  in  a  plain  black  gown,"  bowed  quietly  to 
his  fate.  Sir  William  Trussel  at  once  addressed  him  in 
words  which  better  than  any  other  mark  the  nature  of 
the  step  which  the  Parliament  had  taken.  "I,  William 
Trussel,  proctor  of  the  earls,  barons,  and  others,  having 
for  this  full  and  sufficient  power,  do  render  and  give  back 
to  you,  Edward,  once  King  of  England,  the  homage  and 
fealty  of  the  persons  named  in  myprocuracy  ;  and  acquit 
and  discharge  them  thereof  in  the  best  manner  that  law 
and  custom  will  give.  And  I  now  make  protestation  in 
their  name  that  they  will  no  longer  be  in  your  fealty 
and  allegiance,  nor  claim  to  hold  anything  of  you  as 
king,  but  will  account  you  hereafter  as  a  private  person, 
without  any  manner  of  royal  dignity."  A  significant  act 
followed  these  emphatic  words.  Sir  Thomas  Blount,  the 
steward  of  the  household,  broke  his  staff  of  office,  a 
ceremony  used  only  at  a  king's  death,  and  declared  that 
all  persons  engaged  in  the  royal  service  were  discharged. 
The  act  of  Blount  was  only  an  omen  of  the  fate  which 
awaited  the  miserable  King.  In  the  following  September 
he  was  murdered  in  Berkeley  Castle. 


CHAPTER  II. 

EDWARD    THE    THIED. 

1327—1347. 

THE  deposition  of  Edward  the  Second  proclaimed  to 
the  world  the  power  which  the  English  Parliament  had 
gained.  In  thirty  years  from  their  first  assembly  at 
Westminster  the  Estates  had  wrested  from  the  Crown 
the  last  relic  of  arbitrary  taxation,  had  forced  on  it  new 
ministers  and  a  new  system  of  government,  had  claimed 
a  right  of  confirming  the  choice  of  its  councillors  and  of 
punishing  their  misconduct,  and  had  established  the 
principle  that  redress  of  grievances  precedes  a  grant  of 
supply.  Nor  had  the  time  been  less  important  in  the 
internal  growth  of  Parliament.  Step  by  step  the  prac- 
tical sense  of  the  Houses  themselves  completed  the 
work  of  Edward  by  bringing  about  change  after  change 
in  its  composition.  The  very  division  into  a  House  of 
Lords  and  a  House  of  Commons  formed  no  part  of  the 
original  plan  of  Edward  the  First ;  in  the  earlier  Parlia- 
ments each  of  the  four  orders  of  clergy,  barons,  knights, 
and  burgesses  met,  deliberated,  and  made  their  grants 
apart  from  each  other.  This  isolation,  however,  of  the 
Estates  soon  showed  signs  of  breaking  down.  Though 
the  clergy  held  steadily  aloof  from  any  real  union  with 
its  fellow-orders,  the  knights  of  the  shire  were  drawn  by 
the  similarity  of  their  social  position  into  a  close  con- 
nexion with  the  lords.  They  seem  in  fact  to  have  been 
soon  admitted  by  the  baronage  to  an  almost  equal  posi- 
tion with  themselves,  whether  as  legislators  or  counsel- 
lors of  the  Crown.  The  burgesses  on  the  other  hand 

(370) 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  371 

took  little  part  at  first  in  Parliamentary  proceedings, 
save  in  those  which  related  to  the  taxation  of  their  class. 
But  their  position  was  raised  by  the  strifes  of  the  reign 
of  Edward  the  Second  when  their  aid  was  needed  by  the 
baronage  in  its  struggle  with  the  Crown  ;  and  their  right 
to  share  fully  in  all  legislative  action  was  asserted  in  the 
statute  of  1322.  From  this  moment  no  proceedings  can 
have  been  considered  as  formally  legislative  save  those 
conducted  in  full  Parliament  of  all  the  estates.  In  sub- 
jects of  public  policy,  however,  the  barons  were  still 
regarded  as  the  sole  advisers  of  the  Crown,  though  the 
knights  of  the  shire  were  sometimes  consulted  with  them. 
But  the  barons  and  knighthood  were  not  fated  to  be 
drawn  into  a  single  body  whose  weight  would  have  given 
an  aristocratic  impress  to  the  constitution.  Gradually, 
through  causes  with  which  we  are  imperfectly  acquainted, 
the  knights  of  the  shire  drifted  from  their  older  con- 
nexion with  the  baronage  into  so  close  and  intimate  a 
union  with  the  representatives  of  the  towns  that  at  the 
opening  of  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Third  the  two  orders 
are  found  grouped  formally  together,  under  the  name  of 
"  The  Commons."  It  is  difficult  to  over-estimate  the 
importance  of  this  change.  Had  Parliament  remained 
broken  up  into  its  four  orders  of  clergy,  barons,  knights, 
and  citizens,  its  power  would  have  been  neutralized  at 
every  great  crisis  by  the  jealousies  and  difficulty  of  co- 
operation among  its  component  parts.  A  permanent 
union  of  the  knighthood  and  the  baronage  on  the  other 
hand  would  have  converted  Parliament  into  the  mere 
representative  of  an  aristocratic  caste,  and  would  have 
robbed  it  of  the  strength  which  it  has  drawn  from  its 
connexion  with  the  great  body  of  the  commercial  classes. 
The  new  attitude  of  the  knighthood,  their  social  con- 
nexion as  landed  gentry  with  the  baronage,  their  polit- 
ical union  with  the  burgesses,  really  welded  the  three 
orders  into  one,  and  gave  that  unity  of  feeling  and  action 
to  our  Parliament  on  which  its  power  has  ever  since 
mainly  depended. 

The  weight  of  the  two  Houses  was  seen  in  their  settle- 
ment of  the  new  government  by  the  nomination  of  a 


372  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

Council  with  Earl  Henry  of  Lancaster  at  its  head.  The 
Council  had  at  once  to  meet  fresh  difficulties  in  the  North. 
The  truce  so  recently  made  ceased  legally  with  Edward's 
deposition;  and  the  withdrawal  of  his  royal  title  in 
further  offers  of  peace  warned  Bruce  of  the  new  temper 
of  the  English  rulers.  Troops  gathered  on  either  side, 
and  the  English  Council  sought  to  pave  the  way  for  an 
attack  by  dividing  Scotland  against  itself.  Edward 
Balliol,  a  son  of  the  former  King  John,  was  solemnly 
received  as  a  vassal-king  of  Scotland  at  the  English  court. 
Robert  was  disabled  by  leprosy  from  taking  the  field  in 
person,  but  the  insult  roused  him  to  hurl  his  marauders 
again  over  the  border  under  Douglas  and  Sir  Thomas 
Randolph.  The  Scotch  army  has  been  painted  for  us  by 
an  eye-witness,  whose  description  is  embodied  in  the  work 
of  Jehan  le  Bel.  "  It  consisted  of  four  thousand  men-at- 
arms,  knights,  and  esquires,  well  mounted,  besides  twenty 
thousand  men  bold  and  hardy,  armed  after  the  manner  of 
their  country,  and  mounted  upon  little  hackneys  that  are 
never  tied  up  or  dressed,  but  turned  immediately  after 
the  day's  march  to  pasture  on  the  heath  or  in  the  fields. 
.  .  .  They  bring  no  carriages  with  them  on  account  of  the 
mountains  they  have  to  pass  in  Northumberland,  neither 
do  they  carry  with  them  any  provisions  of  bread  or  wine, 
for  their  habits  of  sobriety  are  such  in  time  of  war  that 
they  will  live  for  a  long  time  on  flesh  half-sodden  without 
bread,  and  drink  the  river  water  without  wine.  They 
have  therefore  no  occasion  for  pots  or  pans,  for  they  dress 
the  flesh  of  the  cattle  in  their  skins  after  they  have  flayed 
them,  and  being  sure  to  find  plenty  of  them  in  the  coun- 
try which  they  invade  they  carry  none  with  them.  Un- 
der the  flaps  of  his  saddle  each  man  carries  a  broad  piece 
of  metal,  behind  him  a  little  bag  of  oatmeal :  when  they 
have  eaten  too  much  of  the  sodden  flesh  and  their  stom- 
ach appears  weak  and  empty,  they  set  this  plate  over 
the  fire,  knead  the  meal  with  water,  and  when  the  plate 
is  hot  put  a  little  of  the  paste  upon  it  in  a  thin  cake  like 
a  biscuit,  which  they  eat  to  warm  their  stomachs.  It  is 
therefore  no  wonder  that  they  perform  a  longer  day's 
march  than  other  soldiers.  Though  twenty  thousand 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  873 

horsemen  and  forty  thousand  foot  marched  under  their 
boy-king  to  protect  the  border,  the  English  troops  "were 
utterly  helpless  against  such  a  foe  as  this.  At  one  time 
the  whole  army  lost  its  way  in  the  border  wastes ;  at 
another  all  traces  of  the  enemy  disappeared,  and  an  offer 
of  knighthood  and  a  hundred  marks  was  made  to  any 
who  could  tell  where  the  Scots  were  encamped.  But 
when  they  were  found  their  position  behind  the  Wear 
proved  unassailable,  and  after  a  bold  sally  on  the  English 
camp  Douglas  foiled  an  attempt  at  intercepting  him  by  a 
clever  retreat.  The  English  levies  broke  hopelessly  up, 
and  a  fresh  foray  into  Northumberland  forced  the  English 
Court  in  1328  to  submit  to  peace.  By  the  treaty  of  North- 
ampton, which  was  solemnly  confirmed  by  Parliament  in 
September,  the  independence  of  Scotland  was  recognized, 
and  Robert  Bruce  owned  as  its  King.  Edward  formally 
adandoned  his  claim  of  feudal  superiority  over  Scotland ; 
while  Bruce  promised  to  make  compensation  for  the 
damage  done  in  the  North,  to  marry  his  son  David  to 
Edward's  sister  Joan,  and  to  restore  their  forfeited  estates 
to  those  nobles  who  had  sided  with  the  English  King. 

But  the  pride  of  England  had  been  too  much  roused 
by  the  struggle  with  the  Scots  to  bear  this  defeat  easily, 
and  the  first  result  of  the  treaty  of  Northampton  was  the 
overthrow  of  the  government  which  concluded  it.  This 
result  was  hastened  by  the  pride  of  Roger  Mortimer,  who 
was  now  created  Earl  of  March,  and  who  had  made  him- 
self supreme  through  his  influence  over  Isabella  and  his 
exclusion  of  the  rest  of  the  nobles  from  all  practical 
share  in  the  administration  of  the  realm.  The  first  efforts 
to  shake  Roger's  power  were  unsuccessful.  The  Earl  of 
Lancaster  stood,  like  his  brother,  at  the  head  of  the 
baronage;  the  parliamentary  settlement  at  Edward's 
accession  had  placed  him  first  in  the  royal  Council ;  and 
it  was  to  him  that  the  task  of  defying  Mortimer  naturally 
fell.  At  the  close  of  1328,  therefore.  Earl  Henry  formed 
a  league  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  with  the 
young  King's  uncles,  the  Earls  of  Norfolk  and  Kent,  to 
bring  Mortimer  to  account  for  the  peace  with  Scotland 
and  the  usurpation  of  the  government  as  well  as  for  the 


374  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

late  King's  murder,  a  murder  which  had  been  the  work 
of  his  private  partizans  and  which  had  profoundly 
shocked  the  general  conscience.  But  the  young  King 
clave  firmly  to  his  mother,  the  Earls  of  Norfolk  and  Kent 
deserted  to  Mortimer,  and  powerful  as  it  seemed  the 
league  broke  up  without  result.  A  feeling  of  insecurity 
however  spurred  the  Earl  of  March  to  a  bold  stroke  at 
his  opponents.  The  Earl  of  Kent,  who  was  persuaded 
that  his  brother,  Edward  the  Second,  still  lived  a  prisoner 
in  Corfe  Castle,  was  arrested  on  a  charge  of  conspiracy 
to  restore  him  to  the  throne,  tried  before  a  Parliament 
filled  with  Mortimer's  adherents,  and  sent  to  the  block. 
But  the  death  of  a  prince  of  the  royal  blood  roused  the 
young  King  to  resentment  of  the  greed  and  arrogance  of 
a  minister  who  treated  Edward  himself  as  little  more  than 
a  state-prisoner.  A  few  months  after  his  uncle's  execu- 
tion the  King  entered  the  Council  chamber  in  Notting- 
ham Castle  with  a  force  which  he  had  introduced 
through  a  secret  passage  in  the  rock  on  which  it  stands, 
and  arrested  Mortimer  with  his  own  hands.  A  Parlia- 
ment which  was  at  once  summoned  condemned  the  Earl 
of  March  to  a  traitor's  death,  and  in  November,  1330,  he 
was  beheaded  at  Tyburn,  while  the  Queen-mother  was 
sent  for  the  rest  of  her  life  into  confinement  at  Castle 
Rising. 

Young  as  he  was,  and  he  had  only  reached  his  eighteenth 
year,  Edward  at  once  assumed  the  control  of  affairs.  His 
first  care  was  to  restore  good  order  throughout  the  coun- 
try, which  under  the  late  government  had  fallen  into 
ruin,  and  to  free  his  hands  by  a  peace  with  France  for 
further  enterprises  in  the  North.  A  formal  peace  had 
been  concluded  by  Isabella  after  her  husband's  fall ;  but 
the  death  of  Charles  the  Fourth  soon  brought  about  new 
jealousies  between  the  two  courts.  The  three  sons  of 
Philip  the  Fair  had  followed  him  on  the  throne  in  suc- 
cession, but  all  had  now  died  without  male  issue,  and 
Isabella,  as  Philip's  daughter,  claimed  the  crown  for  her 
son.  The  claim  in  any  case  was  a  hard  one  to  make  out. 
Though  her  brothers  had  left  no  sons,  they  had  left 
daughters,  and  if  female  succession  were  admitted  these 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  375 

daughters  of  Philip's  sons  would  precede  a  son  of  Philip's 
daughter.     Isabella  met  this  difficulty  by  a  contention 
that  though  females  could  transmit  the  right  of  succes- 
sion they  could  not  themselves  possess  it,  and  that  her 
son,  as  the  nearest  living  male  descendant  of  Philip  the 
Fair,  and  born  in  the  lifetime  of  the  King  from  whom  he 
claimed,  could  claim  in  preference  to  females  who  were 
related  to  Philip  in  as  near  a  degree.     But  the  bulk  of 
French  jurists  asserted  that  only  male  succession  gave 
right  to  the  French  throne.     On  such  a  theory  the  right 
inheritable  from  Philip  the  Fair  was  exhausted ;  and  the 
crown  passed  to  the  son  of  Philip's  younger  brother, 
Charles  of  Valois,  who  in  fact  peacefully  mounted  the 
throne  as  Philip  the  Fifth.     Purely  formal  as  the  claim 
which  Isabella  advanced  seems  to  have  been,  it  revived 
the    irritation    between   the    two   courts,   and    though 
Edward's  obedience  to  a  summons  which  Philip  addressed 
to  him  to  do  homage  for  Aquitaine  brought  about  an 
agreement  that  both  parties  should  restore  the  gains  they 
had  made  since  the  last  treaty  the  agreement  was  never 
carried   out.     Fresh  threats  of  war  ended  in  the  con- 
clusion of  a  new  treaty  of  peace,  but  the  question  whether 
liege  or  simple  homage  was  due  for  the  duchies  remained 
unsettled  when  the  fall  of  Mortimer  gave  the  young  King 
full  mastery  of  affairs.  His  action  was  rapid  and  decisive. 
Clad  as  a  merchant,  and  with  but  fifteen  horsemen  at  his 
back,  Edward  suddenly  made  his  appearance  in  1331  at 
the  French  court  and  did  homage  as  fully  as  Philip  re- 
quired. The  question  of  the  Agenois  remained  unsettled, 
though  the  English  Parliament  insisted  that  its  decision 
should  rest  with  negotiation  and  not  with  war,  but  on 
all  other  points  a  complete  peace  was  made;  and  the 
young  King  rode  back  with  his  hands  free  for  an  attack 
Avhich  he  was  planning  on  the  North. 

The  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of  Northampton  for 
the  restitution  of  estates  had  never  been  fully  carried 
out.  Till  this  was  done  the  English  court  held  that  the 
rights  of  feudal  superiority  over  Scotland  which  it  had 
yielded  in  the  treaty  remained  in  force  ;  and  at  this  mo- 
ment an  opening  seemed  to  present  itself  for  again  assert- 


376  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

ing  these  rights  with  success.  Fortune  seemed  at  last  to 
have  veered  to  the  English  side.  The  death  of  Robert 
Bruce  only  a  year  after  the  Treaty  of  Northampton  left 
the  Scottish  throne  to  his  son  David,  a  child  of  but  eight 
years  old.  The  death  of  the  King  was  followed  by  the 
loss  of  Randolph  and  Douglas  ;  and  the  internal  difficul- 
ties of  the  realm  broke  out  in  civil  strife.  To  the  great 
barons  on  either  side  the  border  the  late  peace  involved 
serious  losses,  for  many  of  the  Scotch  houses  held  large 
estates  in  England  as  many  of  the  English  lords  held 
large  estates  in  Scotland,  and  although  the  treaty  had 
provided  for  their  claims  they  had  in  each  case  been 
practically  set  aside.  It  is  this  discontent  of  the  barons 
at  the  new  settlement  which  explains  the  sudden  success 
of  Edward  Balliol  in  a  snatch  which  he  made  at  the 
Scottish  throne.  Balliol's  design  was  known  at  the  Eng- 
lish court,  where  he  had  found  shelter  for  some  years  ; 
and  Edward,  whether  sincerely  or  no,  forbad  his  barons 
from  joining  him  and  posted  troops  on  the  border  to  hin- 
der his  crossing  it.  But  Balliol  found  little  difficulty  in 
making  his  attack  by  sea.  He  sailed  from  England  at 
the  head  of  a  body  of  nobles  who  claimed  estates  in  the 
north,  landed  in  August  1332  on  the  shores  of  Fife,  and 
after  repulsing  with  immense  loss  an  army  which  attack- 
ed him  near  Perth  was  crowned  at  Scone  two  months 
after  his  landing,  while  David  Bruce  fled  helplessly  to 
France.  Edward  had  given  no  open  aid  to  this  enter- 
prise, but  the  crisis  tempted  his  ambition,  and  he  de- 
manded and  obtained  from  Balliol  an  acknowledgment 
of  the  English  suzerainty.  The  acknowledgment  how- 
ever was  fatal  to  Balliol  himself.  Surprised  at  Annan 
by  a  party  of  Scottish  nobles,  their  sudden  attack  drove 
him  in  December  over  the  border  after  a  reign  of  but 
five  months ;  and  Berwick,  which  he  had  agreed  to  sur- 
render to  Edward,  was  strongly  garrisoned  against  an 
English  attack.  The  sudden  breakdown  of  his  vassal- 
king  left  Edward  face  to  face  with  a  new  Scotch  war.  The 
Parliament  which  he  summoned  to  advise  on  the  enforce- 
ment of  his  claim  showed  no  wish  to  plunge  again  into 
the  contest,  and  met  him  only  with  evasions  and  delays. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  377 

But  Edward  had  gone  too  far  to  withdraw.  In  March 
1333,  he  appeared  before  Berwick,  and  besieged  the  town. 
A  Scotch  army  under  the  regent,  Sir  Archibald  Douglas, 
brother  to  the  famous  Sir  James,  advanced  to  its  relief 
in  July  and  attacked  a  covering  force  which  was  en- 
camped on  the  strong  position  of  Halidon  Hill.  The 
English  bowmen  however  vindicated  the  fame  they  had 
first  won  at  Falkirk,  and  were  soon  to  crown  in  the  vic- 
tory of  Cre9y.  The  Scotch  only  struggled  through  the 
marsh  which  covered  the  English  front  to  be  riddled 
with  a  storm  of  arrows  and  to  break  in  utter  rout.  The 
battle  decided  the  fate  of  Berwick.  From  that  time  the 
town  has  remained  English  territory.  It  was  in  fact  the 
one  part  of  Edward's  conquests  which  was  preserved  in 
the  end  by  the  English  crown.  But  fragment  as  it  was, 
it  was  always  viewed  legally  as  representing  the  realm 
of  which  it  once  formed  a  part.  As  Scotland,  it  had  its 
chancellor,  chamberlain,  and  other  officers  of  State : 
and  the  peculiar  heading  of  Acts  of  Parliament  enacted 
for  England  "and  the  town  of  Berwlck-upon-Tweed " 
still  preserves  the  memory  of  its  peculiar  position.  But 
the  victory  did  more  than  give  Berwick  to  England. 
The  defeat  of  Douglas  was  followed  by  the  submission 
of  a  large  part  of  the  Scotch  nobles,  by  the  flight  of  the 
boy-king  David,  and  by  the  return  of  Balliol  unopposed 
to  the  throne.  Edward  exacted  a  heavy  price  for  his 
aid.  All  Scotland  south  of  the  Firth  of  Forth  was  ceded 
to  England,  and  Balliol  did  homage  as  vassal-king  for 
the  rest. 

It  was  at  the  moment  of  this  submission  that  the  young 
King  reached  the  climax  of  his  success.  A  king  at  four- 
teen, a  father  at  seventeen,  he  had  carried  out  at  eight- 
een a  political  revolution  in  the  overthrow  ',of  Mortimer, 
and  restored  at  twenty-two  the  ruined  work  of  his-grand- 
father.  The  northern  frontier  was  carried  to  its  old  line 
under  the  Northumbrian  kings.  His  kingdom  within 
was  peaceful  and  orderly ;  and  the  strife  with  France 
seemed  at  an  end.  During  the  next  three  years  Edward 
persisted  in  the  line  of  policy  he  had  adopted,  retaining 
his  hold  over  Southern  Scotland,  aiding  his  sub-king 


378  HISTORY   OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

Balliol  in  campaign  after  campaign  against  the  despairing 
efforts  of  the  nobles  who  still  adhered  to  the  house  of 
Bruce,  a  party  who  were  now  headed  by  Robert  the 
Steward  of  Scotland  and  by  Earl  Randolph  of  Moray. 
His  perseverance  was  all  but  crowned  with  success, 
when  Scotland  was  again  saved  by  the  intervention  of 
France.  The  success  of  Edward  roused  anew  the  jeal- 
ousy of  the  French  court.  David  Bruce  found  a  refuge 
with  Philip  ;  French  ships  appeared  off  the  Scotch  coast 
and  brought  aid  to  the  patriot  nobles ;  and  the  old  legal 
questions  about  the  Agenois  and  Aquitaine  were  mooted 
afresh  by  the  French  council.  For  a  time  Edward  staved 
off  the  contest  by  repeated  embassies;  but  his  refusal  to 
accept  Philip  as  a  mediator  between  England  and  the 
Scots  stirred  France  to  threats  of  war.  In  1335  fleets 
gathered  on  its  coast ;  descents  were  made  on  the  English 
shores  ;  and  troops  and  galleys  were  hired  in  Italy  and 
the  north  for  an  invasion  of  England.  The  mere  threat 
of  war  saved  Scotland.  Edward's  forces  there  were 
drawn  to  the  south  to  meet  the  looked  for  attack  from 
across  the  Channel ;  and  the  patriot  party,  freed  from 
their  pressure,  at  once  drew  together  again.  The  actual 
declaration  of  war  against  France  at  the  close  of  1337 
was  the  knell  of  Balliol's  greatness ;  he  found  himself 
without  an  adherent  and  withdrew  two  years  later  to  the 
court  of  Edward,  while  David  returned  to  his  kingdom  in 
1342  and  won  back  the  chief  fastnesses  of  the  Lowlands. 
From  that  moment  the  freedom  of  Scotland  was  secured. 
From  a  war  of  conquest  and  patriotic  resistance  the 
struggle  died  into  a  pretty  strife  between  two  angry 
neighbors,  which  became  a  mere  episode  in  the  larger 
contest  which  it  had  stirred  between  England  and 
France. 

Whether  in  its  national  or  in  its  European  bearings  it 
is  difficult  to  over-estimate  the  importance  of  the  contest 
which  was  now  to  open  between  these  two  nations.  To 
England  it  brought  a  social,  a  religious,  and  in  the  end 
a  political  revolution.  The  Peasant  Revolt,  Lollardry, 
and  the  New  Monarchy  were  direct  issues  of  the  Hundred 
Years'  War.  With  it  began  the  militar}-  renown  of  Eng- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307. — 1461.  379 

land ;  with  it  opened  her  struggle  for  the  mastery  of  the 
seas.  The  pride  begotten  by  great  victories  and  a  sud- 
den revelation  of  warlike  prowess  roused  the  country 
not  only  to  a  new  ambition,  a  new  resolve  to  assert  itself 
as  a  European  power,  but  to  a  repudiation  of  the  claims 
of  the  Papacy  and  an  assertion  of  the  ecclesiastical  inde- 
pendence both  of  Church  and  Crown  which  paved  the 
way  for  and  gave  its  ultimate  form  to  the  English  Refor- 
mation. The  particular  shape  which  English  warfare 
assumed,  the  triumph  of  the  yeoman  and  archer  over 
noble  and  knight,  gave  new  force  to  the  political  advance 
of  the  Commons.  On  the  other  hand  the  misery  of  the 
war  produced  the  first  great  open  feud  between  labor  and 
capital.  The  glory  of  Cre§y  or  Poitiers  was  dearly 
bought  by  the  upgrowth  of  English  pauperism.  The 
warlike  temper  nursed  on  foreign  fields  begot  at  home  a 
new  turbulence  and  scorn  of  law,  woke  a  new  feudal 
spirit  in  the  baronage,  and  sowed  in  the  revolution  which 
placed  a  new  house  on  the  throne  the  seeds  of  that  fatal 
strife  over  the  succession  which  troubled  England  to  the 
days  of  Elizabeth.  Nor  was  the  contest  of  less  import 
in  the  history  of  France.  If  it  struck  her  for  the  mo- 
ment from  her  height  of  pride,  it  raised  her  in  the  end 
to  the  front  rank  among  the  states  of  Europe.  It  carried 
her  boundaries  to  the  Rhone  and  the  Pyrenees.  It 
wrecked  alike  the  feudal  power  of  her  noblesse  and  the 
hopes  of  constitutional  liberty  which  might  have  sprung 
from  the  emancipation  of  the  peasant  or  the  action  of  the 
burgher.  It  confounded  a  royal  despotism  which  reached 
its  height  in  Richelieu  and  finally  plunged  France  into 
the  gulf  of  the  Revolution. 

Of  these  mighty  issues  little  could  be  foreseen  at  the 
moment  when  Philip  and  Edward  declared  war.  But 
from  the  very  first  the  war  took  European  dimensions. 
The  young  King  saw  clearly  the  greater  strength  of 
France.  The  weakness  of  the  Empire,  the  captivity  of 
the  Papacy  at  Avignon,  left  her  without  a  rival  among 
European  powers.  The  French  chivalry  was  the  envy 
of  the  world,  and  its  military  fame  had  just  been 
heightened  by  a  victory  over  the  Flemish  communes  at 


380  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Cassel.  In  numbers,  in  wealth,  the  French  people  far 
surpassed  their  neighbors  over  the  Channel.  England 
can  hardly  have  counted  more  than  four  millions  of 
inhabitants,  France  boasted  of  twenty.  The  clinging  of 
our  kings  to  their  foreign  dominions  is  explained  by  the 
fact  that  their  subjects  in  Gascony,  Aquitaine,  and  Poitou 
must  have  equalled  in  number  their  subjects  in  England. 
There  was  the  same  disproportion  in  the  wealth  of  the 
two  countries  and,  as  men  held  then,  in  their  military  re- 
sources. Edward  could  bring  only  eight  thousand  men- 
at-arms  to  the  field.  Philip,  while  a  third  of  his  force 
was  busy  elsewhere,  could  appear  at  the  head  of  forty 
thousand.  Of  the  revolution  in  warfare  which  was  to 
reverse  this  superiority,  to  make  the  footman  rather  than 
the  horseman  the  strength  of  an  army,  the  world  and 
even  the  English  King,  in  spite  of  Falkirk  and  Halidon, 
as  yet  recked  little.  Edward's  whole  energy  was  bent 
on  meeting  the  strength  of  France  by  a  coalition  of 
powers  against  her,  and  his  plans  were  helped  by  the 
dread  which  the  great  feudatories  of  the  empire  who  lay 
nearest  to  him,  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  the  Counts  of 
Hainault  and  Gelders,  the  Markgrave  of  Juliers,  felt  of 
French  annexation.  They  listened  willingly  enough  to 
his  offers.  Sixty  thousand  crowns  purchased  the  alliance 
of  Brabant.  Lesser  subsidies  bought  that  of  the  two 
counts  and  the  Markgrave.  The  King's  work  was  helped 
indeed  by  his  domestic  relations.  The  Count  of  Hain- 
ault was  Edward's  father-in-law  ,  he  was  also  the  father- 
in-law  of  the  Count  of  Gelders.  But  the  marriage  of 
a  third  of  the  Count's  daughters  brought  the  English 
King  a  more  important  ally.  She  was  wedded  to  the 
Emperoi\  Lewis  of  Bavaria,  and  the  connexion  that  thus 
existed  between  the  English  and  Imperial  Courts  facili- 
tated the  negotiations  which  ended  in  a  formal  alliance. 

But  the  league  had  a  more  solid  ground.  The  Em- 
peror, like  Edward,  had  his  strife  with  France.  His 
strife  sprang  from  the  new  position  of  the  Papacy.  The 
removal  of  the  Popes  to  Avignon  which  followed  on  the 
quarrel  of  Boniface  the  Eighth  with  Philip  ]e  Bel,  and  the 
subjection  to  the  French  court  which  resulted  from  it,  af- 


THE    PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  881 

fected  the  whole  state  of  European  politics.  In  the  ever- 
recurring  contest  between  the  Papacy  and  the  Empire 
France  had  of  old  been  the  lieutenant  of  the  Roman  See. 
But  with  the  settlement  at  Avignon  the  relation  changed, 
and  the  Pope  became  the  lieutenant  of  France.  Instead 
of  the  Papacy  using  the  French  Kings  in  its  war  of  ideas 
against  the  Empire  the  French  Kings  used  the  Papacy  as 
an  instrument  in  their  political  rivalry  with  the  Emperors. 
But  if  the  position  of  the  Pope  drew  Lewis  to  the  side  of 
England,  it  had  much  to  do  with  drawing  Edward  to  the 
side  of  Lewis.  It  was  this  that  made  the  alliance,  fruit- 
less as  it  proved  in  a  military  sense,  so  memorable  in  its 
religious  results.  Hitherto  England  had  been  mainly  on 
the  side  of  the  Popes  in  their  strife  against  the  Emperors. 
Now  that  the  Pope  had  become  a  tool  in  the  hands  of  a 
power  which  was  to  be  its  great  enemy,  the  country  was 
driven  to  close  alliances  with  the  Empire  and  to  an  ever- 
growing alienation  from  the  Roman  See.  In  Scotch  affairs 
the  hostility  of  the  Popes  had  been  steady  and  vexatious 
ever  since  Edward  the  First's  time,  and  from  the  moment 
that  this  fresh  struggle  commenced  they  again  showed 
their  Fr.ench  partizanship.  When  Lewis  made  a  last 
appeal  for  peace,  Philip  of  Valois  made  Benedict  XII.  lay 
down  as  a  condition  that  the  Emperor  should  form  no 
alliance  with  an  enemy  of  France.  The  quarrel  of  both 
England  and  Germany  with  the  Papacy  at  once  grew 
ripe.  The  German  Diet  met  to  declare  that  the  Imperial 
power  came  from  God  alone,  and  that  the  choice  of  an 
Emperor  needed  no  Papal  confirmation,  while  Benedict 
replied  by  a  formal  excommunication  of  Lewis.  England 
on  the  other  hand  entered  on  a  religious  revolution  when 
she  stood  hand  in  hand  with  an  excommunicated  power. 
It  was  significant  that  though  worship  ceased  in  Flanders 
on  the  Pope's  interdict,  the  English  priests  who  were 
brought  over  set  the  interdict  at  naught. 

The  negotiation  of  this  alliance  occupied  the  whole  of 
1337  ;  it  ended  in  a  promise  of  the  Emperor  on  payment 
of  3,000  gold  florins  to  furnish  two  thousand  men-at- 
arms.  In  the  opening  of  1338  an  attack  of  Philip  on 
the  Agenois  forced  Edward  into  open  war.  His  profuse 


382  HISTORY    OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

expenditure  however  brought  little  fruit.  Though  Ed- 
ward crossed  to  Antwerp  in  the  summer,  the  year  was 
spent  in  nogotiations  with  the  princes  of  the  Lower 
Rhine  and  in  an  interview  with  the  Emperor  at  Coblentz, 
where  Lewis  appointed  him  Vicar-General  of  the  Emperor 
for  all  territories'  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhine.  The 
occupation  of  Cambray,  an  Imperial  fief,  by  the  French 
King  gave  a  formal  ground  for  calling  the  princes  of 
this  district  to  Edward's  standard.  But  already  the 
great  alliance  showed  signs  of  yielding.  Edward,  uneasy 
at  his  connexion  with  an  Emperor  under  the  ban  of  the 
Church  and  harassed  by  vehement  remonstrances  from 
the  Pope,  entered  again  into  negotiations  with  France  in 
the  winter  of  1338;  and  Lewis,  alarmed  in  his  turn, 
listened  to  fresh  overtures  from  Benedict,  who  held  out 
vague  hopes  of  reconciliation,  while  he  threatened  a 
renewed  excommunication  if  Lewis  persisted  in  invading 
France.  The  non-arrival  of  the  English  subsidy  decided 
the  Emperor  to  take  no  personal  part  in  the  war,  and 
the  attitude  of  Lewis  told  on  the  temper  of  Edward's 
German  allies.  Though  all  joined  him  in  the  summer 
of  1339  on  his  formal  summons  of  them  as  Vicar-General 
of  the  Empire,  and  his  army  when  it  appeared  before 
Cambray  numbered  forty  thousand  men,  their  ardor 
cooled  as  the  town  held  out.  Philip  approached  it  from 
the  south,  and  on  Edward's  announcing  his  resolve  to 
cross  the  river  and  attack  him  he  was  at  once  deserted 
by  the  two  border  princes  who  had  most  to  lose  from  a 
contest  with  France,  the  Counts  of  Hainault  and  Namur. 
But  the  King  was  still  full  of  hope.  He  pushed  forward 
to  the  country  round  St.  Quentin.  between  the  head 
waters  of  the  Somme  and  the  Oise  with  the  purpose  of 
forcing  a  decisive  engagement.  But  he  found  Philip 
strongly  encamped,  and  declaring  their  supplies  ex- 
hausted his  allies  at  once  called  for  a  retreat.  It  was  in 
vain  that  Edward  moved  slowly  for  a  week  along  the 
French  border.  Philip's  position  was  too  strongly  guarded 
by  marshes  and  entrenchments  to  be  attacked,  and  at 
last  the  allies  would  stay  no  longer.  At  the  news  that 
the  French  King  had  withdrawn  to  the  south  the  whole 
army  in  turn  fell  back  upon  Brussels. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  383 

The  failure  of  the  campaign  dispelled  the  hopes  which 
Edward  had  drawn  from  his  alliance  with  the  Empire. 
With  the  exhaustion  of  his  subsidies  the  princes  of  the 
Low  Countries  became  inactive.  The  Duke  of  Brabant 
became  cooler  in  his  friendship.  The  Emperor  himself, 
still  looking  to  an  accommodation  with  the  Pope  and 
justly  jealous  of  Edward's  own  intrigues  at  Avignon, 
wavered  and  at  last  fell  away.  But  though  the  alliance 
ended  in  disappointment  it  had  given  a  new  impulse  to  the 
grudge  against  the  Papacy  which  began  with  its  ex- 
tortions in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Third.  The  hold  of 
Rome  on  the  loyalty  of  England  was  sensibly  weakening. 
Their  transfer  from  the  Eternal  City  to  Avignon  robbed 
the  Popes  of  half  the  awe  which  they  had  inspired  among 
Englishmen.  Not  only  did  it  bring  them  nearer  and 
more  into  the  light  of  common  day,  but  it  dwarfed  them 
into  mere  agents  of  French  polic}r.  The  old  bitterness 
at  their  exactions  was  revived  by  the  greed  to  which  they 
were  driven  through  their  costly  efforts  to  impose  a 
French  and  Papal  Emperor  on  Germany  as  well  as  to 
secure  themselves  in  their  new  capital  on  the  Rhone. 
The  mighty  building,  half  fortress,  half  palace,  which 
still  awes  the  traveller  at  Avignon  has  played  its  part 
in  our  history.  Its  erection  was  to  the  rise  of  Lollardry 
what  the  erection  of  St.  Peter's  was  to  the  rise  of  Luther- 
anism.  Its  massive  walls,  its  stately  chapel,  its  chambers 
glowing  with  the  frescoes  of  Simone  Memmi,  the  garden 
which  covered  its  roof  with  a  strange  verdure,  called 
year  by  year  for  fresh  supplies  of  gold  ;  and  for  this  as 
for  the  wider  and  costlier  schemes  of  Papal  policy  gold 
could  be  got  only  by  pressing  harder  and  harder  on  the 
national  churches  the  worst  claims  of  the  Papal  court, 
by  demands  of  first-fruits  and  an  nates  from  rectory  and 
bishopric,  by  pretensions  to  the  right  of  bestowing  all 
benefices  which  were  in  ecclesiastical  patronage  and  by 
the  sale  of  these  presentations,  by  the  direct  taxation  of 
the  clergy,  by  the  intrusion  of  foreign  priests  into  Eng- 
lish livings,  by  opening  a  mart  for  the  disposal  of 
pardons,  dispensations,  and  indulgences,  and  by  encourag- 
ing appeals  from  every  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  to  the 


384  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Papal  court.  No  grievance  was  more  bitterly  felt  than 
this  grievance  of  appeals.  Cases  of  the  most  trifling 
importance  were  called  for  decision  out  of  the  realm  to  a 
tribunal  whose  delays  were  proverbial  and  whose  fees 
were  enormous.  The  envy  of  an  Oxford  College  which 
sought  only  a  formal  licence  to  turn  a  vicarage  into  a 
rectory  had  not  only  to  bear  the  expense  and  toil  of  a 
journey  which  then  occupied  some  eighteen  days  but  was 
kept  dangling  at  Avignon  for  three-and-twenty  weeks. 
Humiliating  and  vexatious  however  as  these  appeals 
were,  they  were  but  one  among  the  means  of  extortion 
which  the  Papal  court  multiplied  as  its  needs  grew 
greater.  The  protest  of  a  later  Parliament,  exaggerated 
as  its  statements  no  doubt  are,  shows  the  extent  of  the 
national  irritation,  if  not  of  the  grievances  which  pro- 
duced it.  It  asserted  that  the  taxes  levied  by  the  Pope 
amounted  to  five  times  the  amount  of  those  levied  by 
the  king ;  that  by  reservations  during  the  life  of  actual 
holders  the  Pope  disposed  of  the  same  bishopric  four 
or  five  times  over,  receiving  each  time  the  first-fruits. 
"  The  brokers  of  the  sinful  city  of  Rome  promote  for 
money  unlearned  and  unworthy  caitiffs  to  benefices  to 
the  value  of  a  thousand  marks,  while  the  poor  and  learned 
hardly  obtain  one  of  twenty.  So  decays  sound  learnino-. 
They  present  aliens  who  neither  see  nor  care  to  see  their 
parishioners,  despise  God's  services,  convey  away  tlue 
treasure  of  the  realm,  and  are  worse  than  Jews  or  Sara- 
cens. The  Pope's  revenue  from  England  alone  is  larger 
than  that  of  any  prince  in  Christendom.  God  gave  his 
sheep  to  be  pastured,  not  to  be  shaven  and  shorn."  At 
the  close  of  this  reign  indeed  the  deaneries  of  Lichfield, 
Salisbury,  and  York,  the  archdeaconry  of  Canterbury, 
which  was  reputed  the  wealthiest  English  benefice, 
together  with  a  host  of  prebends  and  preferments,  were 
held  by  Italian  cardinals  and  priests,  while  the  Pope's 
collector  from  his  office  in  London  sent  twenty  thousand 
marks  a  year  to  the  Papal  treasury. 

But  the  greed  of  the  Popes  was  no  new  grievance, 
though  the  increase  of  these  exactions  since  the  removal 
to  Avignon  gave  it  a  new  force.  What  alienated  Eng- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  385 

land  most  was  their  connexion  with  and  dependence  on 
France.  From  the  first  outset  of  the  troubles  in  the 
North  their  attitude  had  been  one  of  hostility  to  the  Eng- 
lish projects.  France  was  too  useful  a  supporter  of  the 
Papal  court  to  find  much  difficulty  in  inducing  it  to  aid 
in  hampering  the  growth,  of  English  greatness.  Boniface 
the  Eighth  released  Balliol  from  his  oath  of  fealty,  and 
forbad  Edward  to  attack  Scotland  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  a  fief  of  the  Roman  see.  His  intervention  was  met 
by  a  solemn  and  emphatic  protest  from  the  English  Par- 
liament; but  it  none  the  less  formed  a  terrible  obstacle 
in  Edward's  way.  The  obstacle  was  at  last  removed  by 
the  quarrel  of  Boniface  with  Philip  the  Fair  ;  but  the  end 
of  this  quarrel  only  threw  the  Papacy  more  completely 
into  the  hands  of  France.  Though  Avignon  remained 
imperial  soil,  the  removal  of  the  Popes  to  this  city  on  the 
verge  of  their  dominions  made  them  mere  tools  of  the 
French  Kings.  Much,  no  doubt,  of  the  endless  negotiation 
which  the  Papal  court  carried  on  with  Edward  the  Third 
in  his  strife  with  Philip  of  Valois  was  an  honest  struggle 
for  peace.  But  to  England  it  seemed  the  mere  interfer- 
ence of  a  dependent  on  behalf  of  "  our  enemy  of  France." 
The  people  scorned  a  "  French  Pope,"  and  threatened 
Papal  legates  with  stoning  when  they  landed  on  English 
shores.  The  alliance  of  Edward  with  an  excommuni- 
cated Emperor,  the  bold  defiance  with  which  English 
priests  said  mass  in  Flanders  when  an  interdict  reduced 
the  Flemish  priests  to  silence,  were  significant  tokens  of 
the  new  attitude  which  England  was  taking  up  in  the 
face  of  Popes  who  were  leagued  with  its  enemy.  The  old 
quarrel  over  ecclesiastical  wrongs  was  renewed  in  a  formal 
and  decisive  way.  In  1343  the  Commons  petitioned  for 
the  redress  of  the  grievance  of  Papal  appointments  to  va- 
cant livings  in  despite  of  the  rights  of  patrons  or  the 
Crown  ;  and  Edward  formally  complained  to  the  Pope  of 
his  appointing  "  foreigners,  most  of  them  suspicious  per- 
sons, who  do  not  reside  on  their  benefices,  who  do  not 
know  the  faces  of  the  flocks  entrusted  to  them,  who  do 
not  understand  their  language,  but,  neglecting  the  cure 
of  souls,  seek  as  hirelings  only  their  worldly  hire."  In, 

25 


886  HISTOKT  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

yet  sharper  words  the  King  rebuked  the  Papal  greed. 
"  The  successor  of  the  Apostles  was  set  over  the  Lord's 
sheep  to  feed  and  not  to  shear  them."  The  Parliament 
declared  "  that  they  neither  could  nor  would  tolerate  such 
things  any  longer ; "  and  the  general  irritation  moved 
slowly  towards  those  statutes  of  Pro  visors  and  Praemunire 
which  heralded  the  policy  of  Henry  the  Eighth. 

But  for  the  moment  the  strife  with  the  Papacy  was 
set  aside  in  the  efforts  which  were  needed  for  a  new 
struggle  with  France.  The  campaign  of  1339  had  not 
only  ended  in  failure,  it  had  dispelled  the  trust  of  Ed- 
ward in  an  Imperial  alliance.  But  as  this  hope  faded 
away  a  fresh  hope  dawned  on  the  King  from  another 
quarter.  Flanders,  still  bleeding  from  the  defeat  of  its 
burghers  by  the  French  knighthood,  was  his  natural  ally. 
England  was  the  great  wool-producing  country  of  the 
west,  but  few  woollen  fabrics  were  woven  in  England. 
The  number  of  weavers'  gilds  shows  that  the  trade  was 
gradually  extending,  and  at  the  very  outset  of  his  reign 
Edward  had  taken  steps  for  its  encouragement.  He  in- 
vited Flemish  weavers  to  settle  in  his  country,  and  took 
the  new  immigrants,  who  chose  the  eastern  counties  for 
the  seat  of  their  trade,  under  his  royal  protection.  But 
English  manufactures  were  still  in  their  infancy,  and  nine- 
tenths  of  the  English  wool  went  to  the  looms  of  Bruges 
or  of  Ghent.  We  may  see  the  rapid  growth  of  this  ex- 
port trade  in  the  fact  that  the  King  received  in  a  single 
year  more  than  X30,000from  duties  levied  on  wool  alone. 
The  wool-sack  which  forms  the  Chancellor's  seat  in  the 
House  of  Lords  is  said  to  witness  to  the  importance  which 
the  government  attached  to  this  new  source  of  wealth. 
A  stoppage  of  this  export  threw  half  the  population  of  the 
great  Flemish  towns  out  of  work,  and  the  irritation 
caused  in  Flanders  by  the  interruption  which  this  trade 
sustained  through  the  piracies  that  Philip's  ships  were 
carrying  on  in  the  Channel  showed  how  effective  the 
threat  of  such  a  stoppage  would  be  in  securing  their  alli- 
ance. Nor  was  this  the  only  ground  for  hoping  for  aid 
from  the  Flemish  towns.  Their  democratic  spirit  jostled 
roughly  with  the  feudalism  of  France.  If  their  counta 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461.  387 

clung  to  the  French  monarchy,  the  towns  themselves, 
proud  of  their  immense  population,  their  thriving  in- 
dustry, their  vast  wealth,  drew  more  and  more  to  inde- 
pendence. Jacques  van  Arteveldt,  a  great  brewer  of 
Ghent,  wielded  the  chief  influence  in  their  councils,  and 
his  aim  was  to  build  up  a  confederacy  which  might  hold 
France  in  check  along  her  northern  border. 

His  plans  had  as  yet  brought  no  help  from  the  Flemish 
towns,  but  at  the  close  of  1339  they  set  aside  their  neu- 
trality for  open  aid.  The  great  plan  of  Federation  which 
Van  Arteveldt  had  been  devising  as  a  check  on  the  ag- 
gression of  France  was  carried  out  in  a  treaty  concluded 
between  Edward,  the  Duke  of  Brabant,  the  cities  of  Brus- 
sels, Antwerp,  Lou  vain,  Ghent,  Bruges,  Ypres,  and  seven 
others.  By  this  remarkable  treaty  it  was  provided  that 
war  should  be  begun  and  ended  only  by  mutual  consent, 
free  commerce  be  encouraged  between  Flanders  and  Bra- 
bant, and  no  change  made  in  their  commercial  arrange- 
ments save  with  the  consent  of  the  whole  league.  By  a 
subsequent  treaty  the  Flemish  towns  owned  Edward  as 
King  of  France,  and  declared  war  against  Philip  of  Valois. 
But  their  voice  was  decisive  on  the  course  of  the  cam- 
paign which  opened  in  1340.  As  Philip  held  the  Upper 
Scheldt  by  the  occupation  of  Cambray,  so  he  held  the 
Lower  Scheldt  by  that  of  Tournay,  a  fortress  which  broke 
the  line  of  commerce  between  Flanders  and  Brabant.  It 
was  a  condition  of  the  Flemish  alliance  therefore  that 
the  war  should  open  with  the  capture  of  Tournay.  It 
was  only  at  the  cost  of  a  fight  however  that  Edward 
could  now  cross  the  Channel  to  undertake  the  siege. 
France  was  as  superior  in  force  at  sea  as  on  land ;  and  a 
fleet  of  two  hundred  vessels  gathered  at  Sluys  to  inter- 
cept him.  But  the  fine  seamanship  of  the  English  sailors 
justified  the  courage  of  their  King  in  attacking  this  fleet 
with  far  smaller  forces ;  the  French  ships  were  utterly 
destroyed  and  twenty  thousand  Frenchmen  slain  in  the 
encounter.  It  was  with  the  lustre  of  this  great  victory 
about  him  that  Edward  marched  upon  Tournay.  Its 
siege  however  proved  as  fruitless  as  that  of  Cambray  in 
the  preceding  year,  and  after  two  months  of  investment 


888  HISTORY   OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

his  vast  army  of  one  hundred  thousand  men  broke  up 
without  either  capturing  the  town  or  bringing  Philip 
when  he  approached  it  to  an  engagement.  Want  of 
money  forced  Edward  to  a  truce  for  a  year,  and  he  re- 
turned beggared  and  embittered  to  England. 

He  had  been  worsted  in  war  as  in  diplomacy.  One 
naval  victory  alone  redeemed  years  of  failure  and  expense. 
Guienne  was  all  but  lost,  England  was  suffering  from  the 
terrible  taxation,  from  the  ruin  of  commerce,  from  the 
ravages  of  her  coast.  Five  years  of  constant  reverses 
were  hard  blows  for  a  King  of  twenty-eight  who  had  been 
glorious  and  successful  at  twenty-three.  His  financial 
difficulties  indeed  were  enormous.  It  was  in  vain  that, 
availing  himself  of  an  Act  which  forbad  the  exportation 
of  wool  "  till  by  the  King  and  his  Council  it  is  otherwise 
provided,"  he  turned  for  the  time  the  wool-trade  into  a 
royal  monopoly  and  became  the  sole  wool  exporter,  buy- 
ing at  X3  and  selling  at  .£20  the  sack.  The  campaign  of 
1339  brought  with  it  a  crushing  debt :  that  of  1340  proved 
yet  more  costly.  Edward  attributed  his  failure  to  the 
slackness  of  his  ministers  in  sending  money  and  supplies, 
and  this  to  their  silent  opposition  to  the  war.  But  wroth 
as  he  was  on  his  return,  a  short  struggle  between  the 
ministers  and  the  King  ended  in  a  reconciliation,  and 
preparations  for  renewed  hostilities  went  on.  Abroad 
indeed  nothing  could  be  done.  The  Emperor  finally 
withdrew  from  Edward's  friendship.  A  new  Pope,  Clem- 
ent the  Sixth,  proved  even  more  French  in  sentiment 
than  his  predecessor.  Flanders  alone  held  true  of  all 
England's  foreign  allies.  Edward  was  powerless  to  at- 
tack Philip  in  the  realm  he  claimed  for  his  own ;  what 
strength  he  could  gather  was  needed  to  prevent  the  utter 
ruin  of  the  English  cause  in  Scotland  on  the  return  of 
David  Bruce.  Edward's  soldiers  had  been  driven  from 
the  open  country  and  confined  to  the  fortresses  of  the 
Lowlands.  Even  these  were  at  last  reft  away.  Perth 
was  taken  by  siege,  and  the  King  was  too  late  to  prevent 
the  surrender  of  Stirling.  Edinburgh  was  captured  by  a 
stratagem.  Only  Roxburgh  and  Berwick  were  saved  by 
a  truce  which  Edward  was  driven  to  conclude  with  the 
Scots. 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  889 

But  with  the  difficulties  of  the  Crown  the  weight  of 
the  two  Houses  made  itself  more  and  more  sensibly  felt. 
The  almost  incessant  warfare  which  had  gone  on  since 
the  accession  of  Edward  the  Third  consolidated  and  de- 
veloped the  power  which  they  had  gained  from  the  dis- 
sensions of  his  father's  reign.  The  need  of  continual 
grants  brought  about  an  assembly  of  Parliament  year  by 
year,  and  the  subsidies  that  were  accorded  to  the  King 
showed  the  potency  of  the  financial  engine  which  the 
Crown  could  now  bring  into  play.  In  a  single  year  the 
Parliament  granted  twenty  thousand  sacks,  or  half  the 
wool  of  the  realm.  Two  years  later  the  Commons  voted 
an  aid  of  thirty  thousand  sacks.  In  1339  the  barons 
granted  the  tenth  sheep  and  fleece  and  lamb.  The  clergy 
granted  two  tenths  in  one  year,  and  a  tenth  for  three 
years  in  the  next.  But  with  each  supply  some  step  was 
made  to  greater  political  influence.  In  his  earlier  years 
Edward  showed  no  jealousy  of  the  Parliament.  His 
policy  was  to  make  the  struggle  with  France  a  national 
one  by  winning  for  it  the  sympathy  of  the  people  at 
large  ;  and  with  this  view  he  not  only  published  in  the 
County  Courts  the  efforts  he  had  made  for  peace,  but 
appealed  again  and  again  for  the  sanction  and  advice  of 
Parliament  in  his  enterprise.  In  1331  he  asked  the 
Estates  whether  they  would  prefer  negotiation  or  war : 
in  1338  he  declared  that  his  expedition  to  Flanders  was 
made  by  the  assent  of  the  Lords  and  at  the  prayer  of  the 
Commons.  The  part  of  the  last  in  public  affairs  grew 
greater  in  spite  of  their  own  efforts  to  remain  obscure. 
From  the  opening  of  the  reign  a  crowd  of  enactments  for 
the  regulation  of  trade,  whether  wise  or  unwise,  shows 
the  influence  of  the  burgesses.  But  the  final  division  of 
Parliament  into  two  Houses,  a  change  which  was  com- 
pleted by  1341,  necessarily  increased  the  weight  of  the 
Commons.  The  humble  trader  who  shrank  from  coun^ 
selling  the  Crown  in  great  matters  of  policy  gathered 
courage  as  he  found  himself  sitting  side  by  side  with  the 
knights  of  the  shire.  It  was  at  the  moment  when  this 
great  change  was  being  brought  about  that  the  disasters 
of  the  war  spurred  the  Parliament  to  greater  activity. 


890  HISTOBY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  enormous  grants  of  1340  were  bought  by  the  King's 
assent  to  statutes  which  provided  remedies  for  grievances 
of  which  the  Commons  complained.  The  most  important 
of  these  put  an  end  to  the  attempts  which  Edward  had 
made  like  his  grandfather  to  deal  with  the  merchant  class 
apart  from  the  Houses.  No  charges  or  aid  was  hence- 
forth to  be  made  save  by  the  common  assent  of  the 
Estates  assembled  in  Parliament.  The  progress  of  the 
next  year  was  yet  more  important.  The  strife  of  the 
King  with  his  ministers,  the  foremost  of  whom  was  Arch- 
bishop Stratford,  ended  in  the  Primate's  refusal  to  make 
answer  to  the  royal  charges  save  in  full  Parliament,  and 
in  the  assent  of  the  King  to  a  resolution  of  the  Lords 
that  none  of  their  number,  whether  ministers  of  the 
Crown  or  no,  should  be  brought  to  trial  elsewhere  than 
before  his  peers.  The  commons  demanded  and  obtained 
the  appointment  of  commissioners  elected  in  Parliament 
to  audit  the  grants  already  made.  Finally  it  was  enacted 
that  at  each  Parliament  the  ministers  should  hold  them- 
t  elves  accountable  for  all  grievances ;  that  on  any 
vacancy  the  King  should  take  counsel  with  his  lords  as 
to  the  choice  of  the  new  minister ;  and  that,  when 
chosen,  each  minister  should  be  sworn  in  Parliament. 

At  the  moment  which  we  have  reached  therefore  the 
position  of  the  Parliament  had  become  far  more  impor- 
tant than  at  Edward's  accession.  Its  form  was  settled. 
The  third  estate  had  gained  a  fuller  parliamentary  power. 
The  principle  of  ministerial  responsibility  to  the  Houses 
had  been  established  by  formal  statute.  But  the  jealousy 
of  Edward  was  at  last  completely  roused,  and  from  this 
moment  he  looked  on  the  new  power  as  a  rival  to  his 
own.  The  Parliament  of  1341  had  no  sooner  broken  up 
than  he  revoked  by  Letters  Patent  the  statutes  it  had 
passed  as  done  in  prejudice  of  his  prerogative,  and  only 
assented  to  for  the  time  to  prevent  worse  confusion. 
The  regular  assembly  of  the  Estates  was  suddenly  inter- 
rupted, and  two  years  passed  without  a  Parliament.  It 
was  only  the  continual  presence  of  war  whick  from  this 
time  drove  Edward  to  summon  the  Houses  at  all. 
Though  the  truce  still  held  good  between  England  and 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  391 

France,  a  quarrel  of  succession  to  the  Duchy  of  Britanny 
which  broke  out  in  1341  and  called  Philip  to  the  support 
of  one  claimant,  his  cousin  Charles  of  Blois,  and  Edward 
to  the  support  of  a  rival  claimant,  John  of  Montfort, 
dragged  on  year  after  year.  In  Flanders  things  went  ill 
for  the  English  cause.  The  dissensions  between  the 
great  and  the  smaller  towns,  and  in  the  greater  towns 
themselves  between  the  weavers  and  fullers,  dissensions 
which  had  taxed  the  genius  of  Van  Arteveldt  through 
the  nine  years  of  his  wonderful  rule,  broke  out  in  1345 
into  a  revolt  at  Ghent,  in  which  the  great  statesman  was 
slain.  With  him  fell  a  design  for  the  deposition  of  the 
Count  of  Flanders  and  the  reception  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales  in  his  stead  which  he  was  ardently  pressing,  and 
whose  political  results  might  have  been  immense.  Depu- 
ties were  at  once  sent  to  England  to  excuse  Van  Arte- 
veldt's  murder  and  to  promise  loyalty  to  Edward  ;  but 
the  King's  difficulties  had  now  reached  their  height. 
His  loans  from  the  Florentine  bankers  amounted  to  half 
a  million.  His  claim  on  the  French  crown  found  not  a 
single  adherent  save  among  the  burghers  of  the  Flemish 
towns.  The  overtures  which  he  made  for  peace  were 
contemptuously  rejected,  and  the  expiration  of  the  truce 
in  1345  found  him  again  face  to  face  with  France. 

But  it  was  perhaps  this  breakdown  of  all  foreign  hope 
that  contributed  to  Edward's  success  in  the  fresh  out- 
break of  war.  The  war  opened  in  Guienne,  and  Henry 
of  Lancaster,  who  was  now  known  as  the  Earl  of  Derby, 
and  who  with  the  Hainaulter  Sir  Walter  Maunay  took  the 
command  in  that  quarter,  at  once  showed  the  abilities  of 
a  great  general.  The  course  of  the  Garonne  was  cleared 
by  his  capture  of  La  Reole  and  Aiguillon,  that  of  the 
Dordogne  by  the  reduction  of  Bergerac,  and  a  way  opened 
for  the  reconquest  of  Poitou  by  the  capture  of  Angou- 
l£me.  These  unexpected  successes  roused  Philip  to 
strenuous  efforts,  and  a  hundred  thousand  men  gathered 
under  his  son,  John,  Duke  of  Normandy,  for  the  subjuga- 
tion of  the  South.  AngoulSme  was  won  back,  and 
Aiguillon  besieged  when  Edward  sailed  to  the  aid  of  his 
hard-pressed  lieutenant.  It  was  with  an  army  of  thirty 


892  HISTORY    OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

thousand  men,  half  English,  half  Irish  and  Welsh,  that 
he  commenced  a  march  which  was  to  change  the  whole 
face  of  the  war.  His  aim  was  simple.  Flanders  was 
still  true  to  Edward's  cause,  and  while  Derby  was  press- 
ing on  in  the  south  a  Flemish  army  besieged  Bouvines 
and  threatened  France  from  the  north.  The  King  had 
at  first  proposed  to  land  in  Guienne  and  relieve  the 
forces  in  the  south ;  but  suddenly  changing  his  design 
he  disembarked  at  La  Hogue  and  advanced  through  Nor- 
mandy. By  this  skilful  movement  Edward  not  only  re- 
lieved Derby  but  threatened  Paris,  and  left  himself  able 
to  co-operate  with  either  his  own  army  in  the  south  or 
the  Flemings  in  the  north.  Normandy  was  totally  with- 
out defence,  and  after  the  sack  of  Caen,  which  was  then 
one  of  the  wealthiest  towns  in  France,  Edward  marched 
upon  the  Seine.  His  march  threatened  Rouen  and  Paris, 
and  its  strategical  value  was  seen  by  the  sudden  panic  of 
the  French  King.  Philip  was  wholly  taken  by  surprise. 
He  attempted  to  arrest  Edward's  march  by  an  offer  to 
restore  the  Duchy  of  Aquitaine  as  Edward  the  Second 
had  held  it,  but  the  offer  was  fruitless.  Philip  was 
forced  to  call  his  son  to  the  rescue.  John  at  once 
raised  the  siege  of  Aiguillon,  and  the  French  army 
moved  rapidly  to  the  north,  its  withdrawal  enabling 
Derby  to  capture  Poitiers  and  make  himself  thorough 
master  of  the  south.  But  John  was  too  distant  from 
Paris  for  his  forces  to  avail  Philip  in  his  emergency,  for 
Edward,  finding  the  bridges  on  the  Lower  Seine  broken, 
pushed  straight  on  Paris,  rebuilt  the  bridge  of  Poissy, 
and  threatened  the  capital. 

At  this  crisis,  however,  France  found  an  unexpected 
help  in  a  body  of  German  knights.  The  long  strife  be- 
tween Lewis  of  Bavaria  and  the  Papacy  had  ended  at 
last  in  Clement's  carrying  out  his  sentence  of  deposition 
by  the  nomination  and  coronation  as  emperor  of  Charles 
of  Luxemburg,  a  son  of  King  John  of  Bohemia,  the  well 
known  Charles  IV.  of  the  ^Golden  Bull.  But  against 
this  Papal  assumption  of  a  right  to  bestow  the  German 
Crown  Germany  rose  as  one  man.  Not  a  town  opened 
its  gates  to  the  Papal  claimant,  and  driven  to  seek  help 


THE   PAKLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  898 

and  refuge  from  Philip  of  Valois  he  found  himself  at  this 
moment  on  the  eastern  frontier  of  France  with  his 
, father  and  600  knights.  Hurrying  to  Paris  this  German 
force  formed  the  nucleus  of  an  army  which  assembled  at 
St.  Denys ;  and  which  was  soon  reinforced  by  15,000 
Genoese  cross-bowmen  who  had  been  hired  from  among 
the  soldiers  of  the  Lord  of  Monaco  on  the  sunny  Riviera 
and  arrived  at  this  hour  of  need.  With  this  host  rapidly 
gathering  in  his  front  Edward  abandoned  his  march  on 
Paris,  which  had  already  served  its  purpose  in  relieving 
Derby,  and  threw  himself  across  the  Seine  to  carry  out 
the  second  part  of  his  programme  by  a  junction  with  the 
Flemings  at  Gravelines  and  a  campaign  in  the  north. 
But  the  rivers  in  his  path  were  carefully  guarded,  and  it 
was  only  by  surprising  the  ford  of  Blanche-Taque  on 
the  Somme  that  the  King  escaped  the  necessity  of  sur- 
rendering to  the  vast  host  which  was  now  hastening  in 
pursuit.  His  communications,  however,  were  no  sooner 
secured  than  he  halted  on  the  twenty-sixth  of  August,  at 
the  little  village  of  CreQy,  in  Ponthieu,  and  resolved  to 
give  battle.  Half  of  his  army,  which  had  been  greatly 
reduced  in  strength  by  his  rapid  marches,  consisted  of 
light-armed  footmen  from  Ireland  and  Wales  ,  the  bulk 
of  the  remainder  was  composed  of  English  bowmen. 
The  King  ordered  his  men-at-arms  to  dismount,  and  drew 
up  his  forces  on  a  low  rise  sloping  gently  to  the  south- 
east, with  a  deep  ditch  covering  its  front,  and  its  flanks 
protected  by  woods  and  a  little  brook.  From  a  wind- 
mill on  the  summit  of  this  rise  Edward  could  overlook 
the  whole  field  of  battle.  Immediately  beneath  him  lay 
his  reserve,  while  at  the  base  of  the  slope  was  placed  the 
main  body  of  the  army  in  two  divisions,  that  to  the  right 
commanded  by  the  young  Prince  of  Wales,  Edward  "  the 
Black  Prince,"  as  he  was  called,  that  to  the  left  by  the 
Earl  of  Northampton.  A  small  ditch  protected  the  Eng- 
lish front,  and  behind  it  the  bowmen  were  drawn  up  "in 
the  form  of  a  harrow "  with  small  bombards  between 
them  "  which  with  tire  threw  little  iron  balls  to  frighten 
the  horses,"  the  first  instance  known  of  the  use  of  artil- 
lery in  field  warfare. 


894  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  halt  of  the  English  army  took  Philip  by  surprise, 
and  he  attempted  for  a  time  to  check  the  advance  of  his 
army.  Bat  the  attempt  was  fruitless  and  the  disorderly 
host  rolled  on  the  English  front.  The  sight  of  his  ene- 
mies indeed  stirred  Philip's  own  blood  to  fury,  "  for  he 
hated  them."  The  fight  began  at  vespers.  The  Genoese 
cross-bowmen  were  ordered  to  open  the  attack,  but  the 
men  were  weary  with  their  march,  a  sudden  storm  wetted 
and  rendered  useless  their  bowstrings,  and  the  loud 
shouts  with  which  they  leapt  forward  to  the  encounter 
were  met  with  dogged  silence  in  the  English  ranks. 
Their  first  arrow  flight,  however,  brought  a  terrible 
reply.  So  rapid  was  the  English  shot  "  that  it  seemed 
as  if  it  snowed."  "  Kill  me  these  scoundrels,"  shouted 
Philip,  as  the  Genoese  fell  back ;  and  his  men-at-arms 
plunged  butchering  into  their  broken  ranks  while  the 
Counts  of  Alen9on  and  Flanders  at  tlje  head  of  the 
French  knighthood  fell  hotly  on  the  Prince's  line.  For 
an  instant  his  small  force  seemed  lost,  and  he  called  his 
father  to  support  him.  But  Edward  refused  to  send  him 
aid.  "  Is  he  dead,  or  unhorsed,  or  so  wounded  that  he 
cannot  help  himself?"  he  asked  the  envoy.  "  No,  sir," 
was  the  reply,  "  but  he  is  in  a  hard  passage  of  arms,  and 
sorely  needs  your  help."  "Return  to  those  that  sent 
you,"  said  the  King, ''  and  bid  them  not  send  to  me  again 
so  long  as  my  son  lives !  Let  the  boy  win  his  spurs,  for, 
if  God  so  order  it,  I  will  that  the  day  may  be  his  and 
that  the  honor  may  be  with  him  and  them  to  whom  I 
have  given  it  in  charge."  Edward  could  see  in  fact  from 
his  higher  ground  that  all  went  well.  The  English  bow- 
men and  men-at-arms  held  their  ground  stoutly  while  the 
Welshmen  stabbed  the  French  horses  in  the  melly  and 
brought  knight  after  knight  to  the  ground.  Soon  the 
French  host  was  wavering  in  a  fatal  confusion.  "  You 
are  my  vassals,  my  friends,"  cried  the  blind  John  of 
Bohemia  to  the  German  nobles  around  him,  "  I  pray  and 
beseech  you  to  lead  me  so  far  into  the  fight  that  I  may 
strike  one  good  blow  with  this  sword  of  mine  !  "  Link- 
ing their  bridles  together,  the  little  company  plunged 
into  the  thick  of  the  combat  to  fall  as  their  fellows  were 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  895 

falling,  The  battle  went  steadily  against  the  French. 
At  last  Philip  himself  hurried  from  the  field,  and  the  de- 
feat became  a  rout.  Twelve  hundreds  knights  and 
thirty  thousand  footmen — a  number  equal  to  the  whole 
English  force — lay  dead  upon  the  ground. 

"  God  has  punished  us  for  our  sins,"  cries  the  chroni- 
cler of  St.  Denys  in  a  passion  of  bewildered  grief  as  he 
tells  the  rout  of  the  great  host  which  he  had  seen  muster- 
ing beneath  his  abbey  walls.  But  the  fall  of  France  was 
hardly  so  sudden  or  so  incomprehensible  as  the  ruin  at 
a  single  blow  of  a  system  of  warfare,  and  with  it  of  the 
political  and  social  fabric  which  had  risen  out  of  that 
system.  Feudalism  rested  on  the  superiority  of  the  horse- 
man to  the  footman,  of  the  mounted  noble  to  the  un- 
mounted churl.  'The  real  fighting  power  of  a  feudal 
army  lay  in  its  knighthood,  in  the  baronage  and  land- 
owners who  took  the  field,  each  with  his  group  of  es- 
quires and  mounted  men-at-arms.  A  host  of  footmen 
followed  them,  but  they  were  ill-armed,  ill-disciplined, 
and  seldom  called  on  to  play  any  decisive  part  on  the 
actual  battle-field.  In  France,  and  especially  at  the  mo- 
ment we  have  reached,  the  contrast  between  the  effici- 
ency of  these  two  elements  of  warfare  was  more  striking 
than  elsewhere.  Nowhere  was  the  chivalry  so  splendid, 
nowhere  was  the  general  misery  and  oppression  of  the 
poor  more  terribly  expressed  in  the  worthlessness  of  the 
mob  of  footmen  who  were  driven  by  their  lords  to  the 
camp.  In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  the  failure  of 
feudalism  to  win  a  complete  hold  on  the  country  was 
seen  in  the  persistence  of  the  older  national  institutions 
which  based  its  defence  on  the  general  levy  of  its  free- 
men. If  the  foreign  Kings  added  to  this  a  system  of 
warlike  organization  grounded  on  the  service  due  from 
its  military  tenants  to  the  Crown,  they  were  far  from  re- 
garding this  as  superseding  the  national  "  fyrd."  The 
Assize  of  Arms,  the  Statute  of  Winchester,  show  with 
what  care  the  fyrd  was  held  in  a  state  of  efficiency.  Its 
force  indeed  as  an  engine  of  war  was  fast  rising  between 
the  age  of  Henry  the  Second  and  that  of  Edward  the 
Third.  The  social  changes  on  which  we  have  already 


896  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

dwelt,  the  facilities  given  to  alienation  and  the  subdivi- 
sion of  lands,  the  transition  of  the  serf  into  a  copyholder 
and  of  the  copyholder  by  redemption  of  his  services  into 
a  freeholder,  the  rise  of  a  new  class  of  "  farmers  "  as  the 
lords  ceased  to  till  their  demesne  by  means  of  bailiffs  and 
adopted  the  practice  of  leasing  it  at  a  rent  or  "  farm  "  to 
one  of  the  customary  tenants,  the  general  increase  of 
wealth  which  was  telling  on  the  social  position  even  of 
those  who  still  remained  in  villenage,  undid  more  and 
more  the  earlier  process  which  had  degraded  the  free 
ceorl  of  the  English  Conquest  into  the  villein  of  the 
Norman  Conquest,  and  covered  the  land  with  a  popula- 
tion of  yeomen,  some  freeholders,  some  with  services  that 
every  day  became  less  weighty  and  already  left  them 
virtually  free. 

Such  men,proudof  their  right  to  justice  and  an  equal 
law,  called  by  attendance  in  the  county  court  to  a  share  in 
the  judicial,  the  financial,  and  the  political  life  of  the 
realm,  were  of  a  temper  to  make  soldiers  of  a  different 
sort  from  the  wretched  serfs  who  followed  the  feudal  lords 
of  the  Continent,  and  they  were  equipped  with  a  weapon 
which  as  they  wielded  it  was  enough  of  itself  to  make 
a  revolution  in  the  art  of  war.  The  bow,  identified  as  it 
became  with  English  warfare,  was  the  weapon  not  of 
Englishmen  but  of  their  Norman  conquerors.  It  was  the 
Norman  arrow-flight  that  decided  the  day  of  Senlac. 
But  in  the  organization  of  the  national  army  it  had  been 
assigned  as  the  weapon  of  the  poorer  freeholders  who  were 
liable  to  serve  at  the  King's  summons  ;  and  we  see  how 
closely  it  had  become  associated  with  them  in  the  picture 
of  Chaucer's  yeoman.  "In  his  hand  he  bore  a  mighty 
bow."  Its  might  lay  not  only  in  the  range  of  the  heavy 
war-shaft,  a  range  we  are  told  of  four  hundred  yards,  but 
in  its  force.  The  English  archer,  taught  from  very  child- 
hood "  how  to  draw,  how  to  lay  his  body  to  the  bow,"  his 
skill  quickened  by  incessant  practise  and  constant  rivalry 
with  his  fellows,  raised  the  bow  into  a  terrible  engine  of 
war.  Thrown  out  along  the  front  in  a  loose  order  that 
alone  showed  their  vigor  and  self-dependence,  the  bow- 
men faced  and  riddled  the  splendid  line  of  knighthood 


THE    PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  397 

as  it  charged  upon  them.  The  galled  horses  "reeled  right 
rudely."  Their  riders  found  even  the  steel  of  Milan  a 
poor  defence  against  the  grey-goose  shaft.  Gradually  the 
bow  dictated  the  very  tactics  of  an  English  battle.  If  the 
mass  of  cavalry  still  plunged  forward,  the  screen  of  archers 
broke  to  right  and  left  and  the  men-at-arms  who  lay  in 
reserve  behind  them  made  short  work  of  the  broken  and 
disordered  horsemen,  while  the  light  troops  from  Wales 
and  Ireland,  flinging  themselves  into  the  melly  with  their 
long  knives  and  darts,  brought  steed  after  steed  to  the 
ground.  It  was  this  new  military  engine  that  Edward  the 
Third  carried  to  the  fields  of  France.  His  armies  were 
practically  bodies  of  hired  soldiery,  for  the  short  period  of 
feudal  service  was  insufficient  for  foreign  campaigns,  and 
yeoman  and  baron  were  alike  drawn  by  a  high  rate  of  pay. 
An  archer's  daily  wages  equalled  some  five  shillings  of  our 
present  money.  Such  payment,  when  coupled  with  the 
hope  of  plunder,  was  enough  to  draw  yeomen  from  thorpe 
and  farm  ,  and  though  the  royal  treasury  was  drained  as 
it  had  never  been  drained  before,  the  English  King  saw 
himself  after  the  day  of  Cregy  the  master  of  a  force  with- 
out rival  in  the  stress  of  war. 

To  England  her  success  was  the  beginning  of  a  career 
of  military  glory  which,  fatal  as  it  was  destined  to  prove 
to  the  higher  sentiments  and  interests  of  the  nation,  gave 
it  a  warlike  energy  such  as  it  had  never  known  before. 
Victory  followed  victory.  A  few  months  after  Cregy  a 
Scotch  army  marched  over  the  border  and  faced,  on  the 
seventeenth  of  October,  an  English  force  at  Neville's  Cross. 
But  it  was  soon  broken  by  the  arrow-flight  of  the  English 
archers,  and  the  Scotch  King,  David  Bruce,  was  taken 
prisoner.  The  withdrawal  of  the  French  from  the  Garonne 
enabled  Henry  of  Derby  to  recover  Poitou.  Edward 
meanwhile,  with  a  decision  which  marks  his  military  ca- 
pacity, marched  from  the  field  of  Cregy  to  form  the  siege 
of  Calais.  No  measure  could  have  been  more  popular 
with  the  English  merchant  class,  for  Calais  was  a  great 
pirate-haven,and  in  a  single  year  twenty-two  privateers  from 
its  port  had  swept  the  Channel.  But  Edward  was  guided 
by  weightier  considerations  than  this.  In  spite  of  his 


898  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE 

victory  at  Sluys  the  superiority  of  France  at  sea  had  been 
a  constant  embarrassment.     From  this  difficulty  the  cap- 
ture of  Calais  would  do  much  to  deliver  him,  for  Dover 
and  Calais  together  bridled  the  Channel.     Nor  was  this 
all.     Not  only  would   the  possession  of  the  town  give 
Edward  a  base  of  operations  against  France,  but  it  afforded 
an  easy   means    of  communication    with  the  only  sure 
allies   of  England,    the   towns  of   Flanders.      Flanders 
seemed  at  this  moment  to  be  wavering.     Its  Count  had 
fallen  at  Crec,y,  but  his  son  Lewis  le  Male,  though  his 
sympathies  were  as  French  as  his  father's,  was  received  in 
November  by  his  subjects  with   the   invariable   loyalty 
which  they  showed  to  their  rulers  ;  and  his  own  efforts  to 
detach  them  from  England  were  seconded  by  the  influence 
of  the  Duke  of  Brabant.     But  with  Edward  close  at  hand 
beneath  the  walls  of  Calais,  the  Flemish  towns  stood  true. 
They  prayed  the  young  Count  to  marry  Edward's  daugh- 
ter, imprisoned  him  on  his  refusal,  and  on  his  escape  to  the 
French  Court  in  the  spring  of  1347,  they  threw  themselves 
heartily  into  the  English    cause.     A  hundred   thousand 
Flemings  advanced  to  Cassel  and   ravaged  the   French 
frontier. 

The  danger  of  Calais  roused  Philip  from  the  panic 
which  had  followed  his  defeat,  and  with  a  vast  army  he 
advanced  to  the  north.  But  Edward's  lines  were  impreg- 
nable. The  French  King  failed  in  another  attempt  to 
dislodge  the  Flemings,  and  was  at  last  driven  to  retreat 
without  a  blow.  Hopeless  of  further  succor,  the  town, 
after  a  year's  siege,  was  starved  into  surrender  in  August, 
1347.  Mercy  was  granted  to  the  garrison  and  the  people 
on  condition  that  six  of  the  citizens  gave  themselves  into 
the  English  King's  hands.  "  On  them,"  said  Edward  with 
a  burst  of  bitter  hatred,  "  I  will  do  my  will."  At  the 
sound  of  the  town  bell,  Jehan  le  Bel  tells  us,  the  folk  of 
Calais  gathered  round  the  bearer  of  these  terms, "  desiring 
to  hear  their  good  news,  for  they  were  all  mad  with  hun- 
ger. When  the  said  knight  told  them  his  news,  then  be- 
gan they  to  weep  and  cry  so  loudly  that  it  was  great  pity. 
Then  stood  up  the  wealthiest  burgess  of  the  town,  Master 
Eustache  de  St.  Pierre  by  name,  and  spake  thus  before 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461 

all :  '  My  masters,  great  grief  and  mishap  it  were  for  all 
to  leave  such  a  people  as  this  is  to  die  by  famine  or  other- 
wise ;  and  great  charity  and  grace  would  he  win  from 
our  Lord  who  could  defend  them  from  dying.  For  me,  I 
have  great  hope  in  the  Lord  that  if  I  can  save  this  people 
by  my  death  I  shall  have  pardon  for  my  faults,  wherefore 
will  I  be  the  first  of  the  six,  and  of  my  own  will  put  my- 
self, barefoot  in  my  shirt  and  with  a  halter  round  my  neck, 
in  the  mercy  of  King  Edward.' "  The  list  of  devoted 
men  was  soon  made  up,  and  the  victims  were  led  before 
the  king.  "  All  the  host  assembled  together ;  there  was 
great  press,  and  many  bade  hang  them  openly,  and  many 
wept  for  pity.  The  noble  King  came  with  his  train  of 
counts  and  barons  to  the  place,  and  the  Queen  followed 
him,  though  great  with  child,  to  see  what  there  would  be. 
The  six  citizens  knelt  down  at  once  before  the  King,  and 
Master  Eustache  spake  thus : — '  Gentle  King,  here  we  be 
six  who  have  been  of  the  old  bourgeoisie  of  Calais  and 
great  merchants  ;  we  bring  you  the  keys  of  the  town  and 
castle  of  Calais,  and  render  them  to  you  at  your  pleasure. 
We  set  ourselves  in  such  wise  as  you  see  purely  at  your 
will,  to  save  the  remnant  of  the  people  that  has  suffered 
much  pain.  So  may  you  have  pity  and  mercy  on  us  for 
your  high  nobleness'  sake.'  Certes,  there  was  then  in 
that  place  neither  lord  nor  knight  that  wept  not  for  pity, 
nor  who  could  speak  for  pity ;  but  the  King  had  his 
heart  so  hardened  by  wrath  that  for  a  long  while  he  could 
not  reply ;  then  he  commanded  to  cut  off  their  heads. 
All  the  knights  and  lords  prayed  him  with  tears,  as  much 
as  they  could,  to  have  pity  on  them,  but  he  would  not 
hear.  Then  spoke  the  gentle  knight,  Master  Walter  de 
Maunay,  and  said,  '  Ha,  gentle  sire  !  bridle  your  wrath; 
you  have  the  renown  and  good  fame  of  all  gentleness ; 
do  not  a  thing  whereby  men  can  speak  any  villany  of 
you  !  If  you  have  no  pity,  all  men  will  say  that' you  have 
a  heart  full  of  all  cruelty  to  put  these  good  citizens  to 
death  that  of  their  own  will  are  come  to  render  them- 
selves to  you  to  save  the  remnant  of  the  people.'  At  this 
point  the  King  changed  countenance  with  wrath,  and 
said  '  Hold  your  peace,  Master  Walter  !  it  shall  be  none 


400  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

otherwise.  Call  the  headsman.  They  of  Calais  have 
made  so  many  of  my  men  die,  that  they  must  die  them- 
selves ! '  Then  did  the  noble  Queen  of  England  a  deed 
of  noble  lowliness,  seeing  she  was  great  with  child,  and 
wept  so  tenderly  for  pity  that  she  could  no  longer  stand 
upright ;  therefore  she  cast  herself  on  her  knees  before 
her  lord  the  King  and  spake  on  this  wise :  4  Ah,  gentle 
sire,  from  the  day  that  I  passed  over  sea  in  great  peril, 
as  you  know,  I  have  asked  for  nothing :  now  pray  1  and 
beseech  you,  with  folded  hands,  for  the  love  of  our  Lady's 
Son  to  have  mercy  upon  them.'  The  gentle  King  waited 
a  while  before  speaking,  and  looked  on  the  Queen  as  she 
knelt  before  him  bitterly  weeping.  Then  began  his  heart 
to  soften  a  little,  and  he  said,  '  Lady,  I  would  rather  you 
had  been  otherwise ;  you  pray  so  tenderly  that  I  dare  not 
refuse  you ;  and  though  I  do  it  against  my  will,  never- 
theless take  them,  I  give  them  to  you.'  Then  took  he 
the  six  citizens  by  the  halters  and  delivered  them  to  the 
Queen,  and  released  from  death  all  those  of  Calais  for  the 
love  of  her;  and  the  good  lady  bade  them  clothe  the  six 
burgesses  and  make  them  good  cheer." 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE     PEASANT      REVOLT. 
1347—1381. 

STILL  in  the  vigor  of  manhood,  for  he  was  but  thirty- 
five,  Edward  the  Third  stood  at  the  height  of  his  renown. 
He  had  won  the  greatest  victory  of  his  age.  France,  till 
now  the  first  of  European  states,  was  broken  and  dashed 
from  her  pride  of  place  at  a  single  blow.  The  kingdom 
seemed  to  lie  at  Edward's  mercy,  for  Guienne  was  re- 
covered, Flanders  was  wholly  on  his  side,  and  Britanny, 
where  the  capture  of  Charles  of  Blois  secured  the  success 
of  his  rival  and  the  English  party  which  supported  him, 
opened  the  road  to  Paris.  At  home  his  government  was 
popular,  and  Scotland,  the  one  enemy  he  had  to  dread, 
was  bridled  by  the  capture  of  her  King.  How  great  his 
renown  was  in  Europe  was  seen  in  1347,  when  on  the 
death  of  Lewis  of  Bavaria  the  electors  offered  him  the 
Imperial  Crown.  Edward  was  in  truth  a  general  of  a 
high  order,  and  he  had  shown  himself  as  consummate  a 
strategist  in  the  campaign  as  a  tactician  in  the  field.  But 
to  the  world  about  him  he  was  even  more  illustrious  as 
the  foremost  representative  of  the  showy  chivalry  of  his 
day.  He  loved  the  pomp  of  tournaments  ;  he  revived  the 
Round  Table  of  the  fabled  Arthur ;  he  celebrated  his 
victories  by  the  creation  of  a  new  order  of  knighthood. 
He  had  varied  the  sterner  operations  of  the  siege  of  Calais 
by  a  hand  to  hand  combat  with  one  of  the  bravest  of  the 
French  knights.  A  naval  picture  of  Froissart  sketches 
Edward  for  us  as  he  sailed  to  meet  a  Spanish  fleet  which 
was  sweeping  the  narrow  seas.  We  see  the  King  sitting 

26  r401> 


402  HISTORY   OF    THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

on  deck  in  his  jacket  of  black  velvet,  his  head  covered  by 
a  black  beaver  hat  "  which  became  him  well,"  and  calling 
on  Sir  John  Chandos  to  troll  out  the  songs  he  had  brought 
with  him  from  Germany,  till  the  Spanish  ships  heave  in 
sight  and  a  furious  fight  begins  which  ends  in  a  victory 
that  leaves  Edward  "  King  of  the  Seas." 

But  beneath  all  this  glitter  of  chivalry  lay  the  subtle, 
busy  diplomatist.  None  of  our  Kings  was  so  restless  a 
negotiator.  From  the  first  hour  of  Edward's  rule  the 
threads  of  his  diplomacy  ran  over  Europe  in  almost  in- 
extricable confusion.  And  to  all  who  dealt  with  him  he 
was  equally  false  and  tricky.  Emperor  was  played  off 
against  Pope  and  Pope  against  Emperor,  the  friendship  of 
the  Flemish  towns  was  adroitly  used  to  put  a  pressure  on 
their  counts,  the  national  wrath  against  the  exactions  of 
the  Roman  see  was  employed  to  bridle  the  French  sympa- 
thies of  the  court  of  Avignon,  and  when  the  statutes  which 
it  produced  had  served  their  purpose  they  were  set  aside 
for  a  bargain  in  which  King  and  Pope  shared  the  plunder 
of  the  Church  between  them.  His  temper  was  as  false  in 
his  dealings  with  his  people  as  in  his  dealings  with  the 
European  powers.  Edward  aired  to  country  and  parlia- 
ment his  English  patriotism.  "  Above  all  other  lands  and 
realms,"  he  made  his  chancellor  say,"  the  King  had  most 
tenderly  at  heart  his  land  of  England,  a  land  more  full  of 
delight  and  honor  and  profit  to  him  than  any  other." 
His  manners  were  popular ;  he  donned  on  occasion  the 
livery  of  a  city  gild;  he  dined  with  a  London  merchant. 
His  perpetual  parliaments,  his  appeals  to  them  and  to  the 
country  at  large  for  counsel  and  aid,  seemed  to  promise  a 
ruler  who  was  absolutely  one  at  heart  with  the  people  he 
ruled.  But  when  once  Edward  passed  from  sheer  careless- 
ness and  gratification  at  the  new  source  of  wealth  which 
the  Parliament  opened  to  a  sense  of  what  its  power  really 
was  becoming,  he  showed  himself  as  jealous  of  freedom 
as  any  king  that  had  gone  before  him.  He  sold  his 
assent  to  its  demands  for  heavy  subsidies,  and  when  he 
had  pocketed  the  money  coolly  declared  the  statutes  he 
had  sanctioned  null  and  void.  The  constitutional  pro- 
gress which  was  made  during  his  reign  was  due  to  hia 


THE   PAKLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  408 

absorption  in  showy  schemes  of  foreign  ambition,  to  his 
preference  for  way  and  diplomatic  intrigue  over  the  sober 
business  of  civil  administration.  The  same  shallowness 
of  temper,  the  same  showiness  and  falsehood,  ran  through 
his  personal  character.  The  King,  who  was  a  model  of 
chivalry  in  his  dealings  with  knight  and  noble,  showed 
himself  a  brutal  savage  to  the  burgesses  of  Calais.  Even 
the  courtesy  to  his  Queen,  which  throws  its  halo  over  the 
story  of  their  deliverance  went  hand  in  hand  with  a  con- 
stant disloyalty  to  her.  When  once  Philippa  was  dead, 
his  profligacy  threw  all  shame  aside.  He  paraded  a  mis- 
tress as  Queen  of  Beauty  through  the  streets  of  London, 
and  set  her  in  pomp  over  tournaments  as  the  Lady  of  the 
Sun.  The  nobles  were  quick  to  follow  their  lord's  ex- 
ample. "  In  those  days,"  writes  a  chronicler  of  the  time, 
"  arose  a  rumor  and  clamor  among  the  people  that 
wherever  there  was  a  tournament  there  came  a  great  con- 
course of  ladies,  of  the  most  costly  and  beautiful  but  not 
of  the  best  in  the  kingdom,  sometimes  forty  and  fifty  in 
number,  as  if  they  were  a  part  of  the  tournament,  ladies 
clad  in  diverse  and  wonderful  male  apparel,  in  parti- 
coloured tunics,  with  short  caps  and  bands  wound  cord- 
wise  round  their  heads,  and  girdles  bound  with  gold  and 
silver,  and  daggers  in  pouches  across  their  body.  And 
thus  they  rode  on  choice  coursers  to  the  place  of  tourney ; 
and  so  spent  and  wasted  their  goods  and  vexed  their  bodies 
with  scurrilous  wantonness  that  the  murmurs  of  the  peo- 
ple sonnded  everywhere.  Bnt  they  neither  feared  God 
nor  blushed  at  the  chaste  voice  of  the  people." 

The  "  chaste  voice  of  the  people  "  was  soon  to  grow 
into  the  stern  moral  protest  of  the  Lollards,  but  for  the 
moment  all  murmurs  were  hushed  by  the  King's  success. 
The  truce  which  followed  the  capture  of  Calais  seemed  a 
mere  rest  in  the  career  of  victories  which  opened  before 
Edward.  England  was  drunk  with  her  glory  and  with 
the  hope  of  plunder.  The  cloths  of  Caen  had  been 
brought  after  the  sack  of  that  town  to  London.  "  There 
was  no  woman."  says  Walsingham,  "who  had  not  got 
garments,  furs,  feather-beds,  and  utensils  from  the  spoils  of 
Calais  and  other  foreign  cities."  The  Court  revelled  in 


404  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

gorgeous  tournaments  and  luxury  of  dress  ;  and  the  estab- 
lishment, in  1346,  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter  which  found 
its  home  in  the  new  castle  that  Edward  was  raising  at 
Windsor,  marked  the  highest  reach  of  the  spurious 
"  Chivalry  "  of  the  day.  But  it  was  at  this  moment  of 
triumph  that  the  whole  color  of  Edward's  reign  suddenly 
changed.  The  most  terrible  plague  the  world  has  ever 
witnessed  advanced  from  the  East,  and  after  devastating 
Europe  from  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Baltic 
swooped,  at  the  close  of  1348,  upon  Britain.  The  traditions 
of  its  destructiveness  and  the  panic-struck  words  of  the 
statutes  passed  after  its  visitation  have  been  amply  justi- 
fied by  modern  research.  Of  the  three  or  four  millions  ^  ho 
then  formed  the  population  of  England,  more  than  one  half 
were  swept  away  in  its  repeated  visitations.  Its  ravages 
were  fiercest  in  the  greater  towns,  where  filthy  and  undrain- 
ed  streets  afforded  a  constant  haunt  to  leprosy  and  fever. 
In  the  burial-ground  which  the  piety  of  Sir  Walter  Maunay 
purchased  for  the  citizens  of  London,  a  spot  whose  site 
was  afterwards  marked  by  the  Charter  House,  more  than 
fifty  thousand  corpses  are  said  to  have  been  interred. 
Thousands  of  people  perished  at  Norwich,  while  in  Bristol 
the  living  were  hardly  able  to  bury  the  dead.  But  the 
Black  Death  fell  on  the  villages  almost  as  fierce  ly  as  on 
the  towns.  More  than  one  half  of  the  priests  of  Yorkshire 
are  known  to  have  perished  ;  in  the  diocese  of  Norwich 
two  thirds  of  the  parishes  changed  their  incumbents.  The 
whole  organization  of  labor  was  thrown  out  of  gear. 
The  scarcity  of  hands  produced  by  the  terrible  mortality 
made  it  difficult  for  villeins  to  perform  the  services  due  for 
their  lands,  and  only  a  temporary  abandonment  of  half 
the  rent  by  the  landowners  induced  the  farmers  of  their 
demesnes  to  refrain  from  the  abandonment  of  their  farms. 
For  a  time  cultivation  became  impossible.  "  The  sheep 
and  cattle  strayed  through  the  fields  and  corn,"  says  a 
contemporary,  "  and  there  were  none  left  who  could  drive 
them."  Even  when  the  first  burst  of  panic  was  over,  the 
sudden  rise  of  wages  consequent  on  the  enormous  diminu- 
tion in  the  supply  of  labor,  though  accompanied  by  a 
corresponding  rise  in  the  price  of  food,  rudely  disturbed 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  405 

the  course  of  industrial  employments.  Harvests  rotted  on 
the  ground  and  fields  were  left  untilled  not  merely  from 
scarcity  of  hands  but  from  the  strife  which  now  for  th& 
first  time  revealed  itself  between  capital  and  labor. 

Nowhere  was  the  effect  of  the  Black  Death  so  keenly 
felt  as  in  its  bearing  on  the  social  revolution  which  had 
been  steadily  going  on  for  a  century  past  throughout  the 
country.  At  the  moment  we  have  reached  the  lord  of  a 
manor  had  been  reduced  over  a  large  part  of  England  to 
the  position  of  a  modern  landlord,  receiving  a  rental  in 
money  from  his  tenants  and  supplying  their  place  in  the 
cultivation  of  his  demesne  lands  by  paid  laborers.  He 
was  driven  by  the  progress  of  enfranchisement  to  rely 
for  the  purposes  of  cultivation  on  the  supply  of  hired 
labor,  and  hitherto  this  supply  had  been  abundant  and 
cheap.  But  with  the  ravages  of  the  Black  Death  and  the 
decrease  of  population  labor  at  once  became  scarce  and 
dear.  There  was  a  general  rise  of  wages,  and  the  farmers 
of  the  country  as  well  as  the  wealthier  craftsmen  of  the 
town  saw  themselves  threatened  with  ruin  by  what  seemed 
to  their  age  the  extravagant  demands  of  the  labor  class. 
Meanwhile  the  country  was  torn  with  riot  and  disorder. 
An  outbreak  of  lawless  self-indulgence  which  followed 
everywhere  in  the  wake  of  the  plague  told  especially  upon 
the  "  landless  men,"  workers  wandering  in  search  of 
work  who  found  themselves  for  the  first  time  masters  of 
the  labor  market,  and  the  wandering  laborer  or  artisan 
turned  easily  into  the  "sturdy  beggar,"  or  the  bandit  of 
the  woods.  A  summary  redress  for  these  evils  was  at 
once  provided  by  the  Crown  in  a  royal  proclamation. 
"  Because  a  great  part  of  the  people,"  runs  this  ordinance, 
"  and  principally  of  laborers  and  servants,  is  dead  of  the 
plague,  some,  seeing  the  need  of  their  lords  and  the  scar- 
city of  servants,  are  unwilling  to  serve  unless  they  receive 
excessive  wages,  and  others  are  rather  begging  in  idleness 
than  supporting  themselves  by  labor,  we  have  ordained 
that  any  able-bodied  man  or  woman,  of  whatsoever  con- 
dition, free  or  serf,  under  sixty  years  of  age,  not  living  of 
merchandise  nor  following  a  trade  nor  having  of  his  own 
wherewithal  to  live,  either  his  own  land  with  the  culture 


406  tSTORY   OF   THE    ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  which  he  could  occupy  himself,  and  not  serving  another, 
shall  if  so  required  serve  another  for  such  wages  as  was 
the  custom  in  the  twentieth  year  of  our  reign  or  five  or 
six  years  before." 

It  was  the  failure  of  this  ordinance  to  effect  its  ends 
which  brought  about,  at  the  close  of  1349,  the  passing  of 
of  the  Statute  of  Laborers.  "  Every  man  or  woman," 
runs  this  famous  provision,  "of  whatsoever  condition,  free 
or  bond,  able  in  body,  and  within  the  age  of  threescore 
years,  .  .  .  and  not  having  of  his  own  whereof  he  may 
live,  nor  land  of  his  own  about  the  tillage  of  which  he 
may  occupy  himself,  and  not  serving  any  other,  shall  be 
bound  to  serve  the  employer  who  shall  require  him  to  do 
so,  and  shall  take  only  the  wages  which  were  accustomed 
to  be  taken  in  the  neighborhood  where  he  is  bound  to 
serve  "  two  years  before  the  plague  began.  A  refusal  to 
obey  was  punished  by  imprisonment.  But  sterner  meas- 
ures were  soon  found  to  be  necessary.  Not  only  was  the 
price  of  labor  fixed  by  the  Parliament  of  1350,  but  the 
labor  class  was  once  more  tied  to  the  soil.  The  laborer 
was  forbidden  to  quit  the  parish  where  he  lived  in  search 
of  better  paid  employment;  if  he  disobeyed,  he  became  a 
"  fugitive,"  and  subject  to  imprisonment  at  the  hands  of 
justices  of  the  peace.  To  enforce  such  a  law  literally 
must  have  been  impossible,  for  corn  rose  to  so  high  a 
price  that  a  day's  labor  at  the  old  wages  would  not 
have  purchased  wheat  enough  for  a  man's  support.  But 
the  landowners  did  not  flinch  from  the  attempt.  The 
repeated  re-enactment  of  the  law  shows  the  difficulty  of 
applying  it  and  the  stubbornness  of  the  struggle  which 
it  brought  about.  The  fines  and  forfeitures  which  were 
levied  for  infractions  of  its  provisions  formed  a  large 
source  of  royal  revenue,  but  so  ineffectual  were  the  origi- 
nal penalties  that  the  runaway  laborer  was  at  last  ordered 
to  be  branded  with  a  hot  iron  on  the  forehead,  while  the 
harboring  of  serfs  in  towns  was  rigorously  put  down. 
Nor  was  it  merely  the  existing  class  of  free  laborers 
which  was  attacked  by  this  reactionary  movement.  The 
increase  of  their  numbers  by  a  commutation  of  labor 
services  for  money  payments  was  suddenly  checked,  and 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  407 

the  ingenuity  of  the  lawyers  who  were  employed  as  stew- 
ards of  each  manor  was  exercised  in  striving  to  restore 
to  the  landowners  that  customary  labor  whose  loss  was 
now  severely  felt.  Manumissions  and  exemptions  which 
had  passed  without  question  were  cancelled  on  grounds 
of  informality,  and  labor  services  from  which  they  held 
themselves  freed  by  redemption  were  again  demanded 
from  the  villeins.  The  attempt  was  the  more  galling  that 
the  cause  had  to  be  pleaded  in  the  manor-court  itself,  and 
to  be  decided  by  the  very  officer  whose  interest  it  was  to 
give  judgment  in  favor  of  his  lord.  We  can  see  the 
growth  of  a  fierce  spirit  of  resistance  through  the  statutes 
which  strove  in  vain  to  repress  it.  In  the  towns,  where 
the  system  of  forced  labor  was  applied  with  even  more 
rigor  than  in  the  country,  strikes  and  combinations  be- 
came frequent  among  the  lower  craftsmen.  In  the  coun- 
try the  free  laborers  found  allies  in  the  villeins  whose 
freedom  from  manorial  service  was  questioned.  These 
were  often  men  of  position  and  substance,  and  throughout 
the  eastern  counties  the  gatherings  of  "  fugitive  serfs  " 
were  supported  by  an  organized  resistance  and  by  large 
contributions  of  money  on  the  part  of  the  wealthier 
tenantry. 

With  plague,  famine,  and  social  strife  in  the  land,  it 
was  no  time  for  reaping  the  fruits  even  of  such  a  victory 
as  CreQy.  Luckily  for  England  the  pestilence  had  fallen 
as  heavily  on  her  foe  as  on  herself.  A  common  suffering 
and  exhaustion  forced  both  countries  to  a  truce,  and 
though  desultory  fighting  went  on  along  the  Breton  and 
Aquitanian  borders,  the  peace  which  was  thus  secured 
lasted  with  brief  intervals  of  fighting  for  seven  years.  It 
was  not  till  1355  that  the  failure  of  a  last  effort  to  turn 
the  truce  into  a  final  peace  again  drove  Edward  into  war. 
The  campaign  opened  with  a  brilliant  prospect  of  success. 
Charles  the  Bad,  King  of  Navarre,  held  as  a  prince  of 
descent  from  the  house  of  Valois  large  fiefs  in  Normandy ; 
and  a  quarrel  springing  suddenly  up  between  him  and 
John,  who  had  now  succeeded  his  father  Philip  on  the 
throne  of  France,  Charles  offered  to  put  his  fortresses  into 
Edward's  hands.  Master  of  Cherbourg,  Avranches,  Pont- 


408  HISTORY   OP   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

audemer,  Evreux  and  Meulan,  Mantes,  Mortain,  Pontoise, 
Charles  held  in  his  hands  the  keys  of  France ;  and 
Edward  grasped  at  the  opportunity  of  delivering  a  crush- 
ing blow.  Three  armies  were  prepared  to  act  in  Nor- 
mand}7,  Britanny,  and  Guienne.  But  the  first  two,  with 
Edward  and  Henry  of  Derby,  who  had  been  raised  to  the 
dukedom  of  Lancaster,  at  their  head,  were  detained  by 
contrary  winds,  and  Charles,  despairing  of  their  arrival, 
made  peace  with  John.  Edward  made  his  way  to  Calais 
to  meet  the  tidings  of  this  desertion  and  to  be  called  back 
to  England  by  news  of  a  recapture  of  Berwick  by  the 
Scots.  But  his  hopes  of  Norman  co-operation  were  re- 
vived in  1356.  The  treachery  of  John,  his  seizure  of  the 
King  of  Navarre,  and  his  execution  of  the  Count  of  Har- 
court,  who  was  looked  upon  as  the  adviser  of  Charles  in 
his  policy  of  intrigue,  stirred  a  general  rising  throughout 
Normandy.  Edward  at  once  despatched  troops  under 
the  Duke  of  Lancaster  to  its  support.  But.  the  insur- 
gents were  soon  forced  to  fall  back.  Conscious  of  the 
danger  to  which  an  English  occupation  of  Normandy 
would  expose  him,  John  hastened  with  a  large  army  to 
the  west,  drove  Lancaster  to  Cherbourg,  took  Evreux, 
and  besieged  Breteuil. 

Here,  however,  his  progress  was  suddenly  checked  by 
news  from  the  south.  The  Black  Prince,  as  the  hero  of 
Cre9y  was  called,  had  landed  in  Guienne  during  the 
preceding  year  and  won  a  disgraceful  success.  Unable 
to  pay  his  troops,  he  staved  off  their  demands  by  a  cam- 
paign of  sheer  pillage.  While  plague  and  war  and  the 
anarchy  which  sprang  up  under  the  weak  government  of 
John  were  bringing  ruin  on  the  northern  and  central 
provinces  of  France,  the  south  remained  prosperous  and 
at  peace.  The  young  prince  led  his  army  of  freebooters 
up  the  Garonne  into  "  what  was  before  one  of  the  fat 
countries  of  the  world,  the  people  good  and  simple,  who 
did  not  know  what  war  was ;  indeed  no  war  had  been 
waged  against  them  till  the  Prince  came.  The  English 
and  Gascons  found  the  country  full  and  gay,  the  rooms 
adorned  with  carpets  and  draperies,  the  caskets  full  of 
fair  jewels.  But  nothing  was  safe  from  these  robbers. 


THE    PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  409 

They,  and  especially  the  Gascons,  who  are  very  greedy, 
carried  off  everything."  Glutted  by  the  sack  of  Carcas- 
sone  and  Narbonne  the  plunderers  fell  back  to  Bordeaux, 
"  their  horses  so  laden  with  spoil  that  they  could  hardly 
move."  Worthier  work  awaited  the  Black  Prince  in  the 
following  year.  In  the  plan  of  campaign  for  1356  it  had 
been  arranged  that  he  should  march  upon  the  Loire,  and 
there  unite  with  a  force  under  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
which  was  to  land  in  Britanny  and  push  rapidly  into  the 
heart  of  France.  Delays,  however,  hindered  the  Prince 
from  starting  from  Bordeaux  till  July,  and  when  his 
march  brought  him  to  the  Loire  the  plan  of  campaign 
had  already  broken  down.  The  outbreak  in  Normandy 
had  tempted  the  English  Council  to  divert  the  force 
under  Lancaster  from  Britanny  to  that  province  ;  and 
the  Duke  was  now  at  Cherbourg,  hard  pressed  by  the 
French  army  under  John.  But  if  its  original  purpose  was 
foiled,  the  march  of  the  Black  Prince  on  the  Loire  served 
still  more  effectively  the  English  cause.  His  advance 
pointed  straight  upon  Paris,  and  again,  as  in  the  Creqy 
campaign,  John  was  forced  to  leave  all  for  the  protection 
of  the  capital.  Hasty  marches  brought  the  King  to  the 
Loire,  while  Prince  Edward  still  lay  at  Vierzon  on  the 
Cher.  Unconscious  of  John's  designs,  he  wasted  some 
days  in  the  capture  of  Romorantin,  while  the  French 
troops  were  crossing  the  Loire  along  its  course  from 
Orleans  to  Tours,  and  John,  with  the  advance,  was  hurry- 
ing through  Loches  upon  Poitiers  in  pursuit,  as  he  sup- 
posed, of  the  retreating  Englishmen.  But  the  move- 
ment of  the  French  army,  near  as  it  was,  was  unknown 
in  the  English  camp ,  and  when  the  news  of  it  forced 
the  Black  Prince  to  order  a  retreat  the  enemy  was  already 
far  ahead  of  him.  Edward  reached  the  fields  north  of 
Poitiers  to  find  his  line  of  retreat  cut  off  and  a  French 
army  of  sixty  thousand  men  interposed  between  his 
forces  and  Bordeaux. 

If  the  Prince  had  shoAvn  little  ability  in  his  manage- 
ment of  the  campaign,  he  showed  tactical  skill  in  the 
fight  which  was  now  forced  on  him.  On  the  nine- 
teenth of  September  he  took  a  strong  position  in  the 


410  HISTORY    OP   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

fields  of  Maupertuis,  where  his  front  was  covered  by  thick 
hedges  and  approachable  only  by  a  deep  and  narrow  lane 
which  ran  between  vineyards.  The  vineyards  and 
hedges  he  lined  with  bowmen,  and  drew  up  his  small 
body  of  men-at-arms  at  the  point  where  the  lane  opened 
upon  the  higher  plain  on  which  he  was  himself  encamped. 
Edward's  force  numbered  only  eight  thousand  men,  and 
the  danger  was  great  enough  to  force  him  to  offer  in  ex- 
change for  a  free  retreat  the  surrender  of  his  prisoners 
and  of  the  places  he  had  taken,  with  an  oath  not  to  fight 
against  France  for  seven  years  to  come.  His  offers,  how- 
ever, were  rejected,  and  the  battle  opened  with  a  charge 
of  three  hundred  French  knights  up  the  narrow  lane. 
But  the  lane  was  soon  choked  with  men  and  horses,  while 
the  front  ranks  of  the  advancing  army  fell  back  before  a 
galling  fire  of  arrows  from  the  hedgerows.  In  this  mo- 
ment of  confusion  a  body  of  English  horsemen,  posted 
unseen  by  their  opponents  on  a  hill  to  the  right,  charged 
suddenly  on  the  French  flank,  and  the  Prince,  watching 
the  disorder  which  was  caused  by  the  repulse  and  sur- 
prise, fell  boldly  on  their  Ifront.  The  steady  shot  of  the 
English  archers  completed  the  panic  produced  by  this 
sudden  attack.  The  first  French  line  was  driven  in,  and 
on  its  rout  the  second,  a  force  of  sixteen  thousand  men, 
at  once  broke  in  wild  terror  and  fled  from  the  field. 
John  still  held  his  ground  with  the  knights  of  the  re- 
serve, whom  he  had  unwisely  ordered  to  dismount  from 
their  horses,  till  a  charge  of  the  Black  Prince  with  two 
thousand  lances  threw  this  vast  body  into  confusion.  The 
French  King  was  taken,  desperately  fighting ,  and  when 
his  army  poured  back  at  noon  in  utter  rout  to  the  gates 
of  Poitiers,  eight  thousand  of  their  number  had  fallen  on 
the  field,  three  thousand  in  the  flight,  and  two  thousand 
men-at-arms,  with  a  crowd  of  nobles,  were  taken  pris- 
oners. The  royal  captive  entered  London  in  triumph, 
mounted  on  a  big  white  charger,  while  the  Prince  rode 
by  his  side  on  a  little  black  hackney  to  the  palace  of  the 
Savoy  which  was  chosen  as  John's  dwelling,  and  a  truce 
for  two  years  seemed  to  give  healing-time  to  France. 
With  the  Scots  Edward  the  Third  had  less  good  for- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  411 

tune.  Recalled  from  Calais  by  their  seizure  of  Berwick, 
the  King  induced  Balliol  to  resign  into  his  hands  his 
shadowy  sovereignty,  and  in  the  spring  of  1356  marched 
upon  Edinburgh  with  an  overpowering  army,  harrying 
and  burning  as  he  marched.  But  the  Scots  refused  an 
engagement,  a  fleet  sent  with  provisions  was  beaten  off 
by  a  storm,  and  the  famine-stricken  army  was  forced  to 
fall  rapidly  back  on  the  border  in  a  disastrous  retreat. 
The  trial  convinced  Edward  that  the  conquest  of  Scot- 
land was  impossible,  and  by  a  rapid  change  of  policy 
which  marks  the  man  he  resolved  to  seek  the  friendship 
of  the  country  he  had  wasted  so  long.  David  Bruce  was 
released  on  promise  of  ransom,  a  truce  concluded  for  ten 
years,  and  the  prohibition  of  trade  between  the  two  king- 
doms put  an  end  to.  But  the  fulness  of  this  reconcilia- 
tion screened  a  dexterous  intrigue.  David  was  childless 
and  Edward  availed  himself  of  the  difficulty  which  the 
young  King  experienced  in  finding  means  of  providing 
the  sum  demanded  for  his  ransom  to  bring  him  over  to  a 
proposal  which  would  have  united  the  two  countries  for- 
ever. The  scheme,  however,  was  carefully  concealed  ; 
and  it  was  not  till  1363  that  David  proposed  to  his  Par- 
liament to  set  aside  on  his  death  the  claims  of  the  Stew- 
ard of  Scotland  to  his  crown,  and  to  choose  Edward's 
third  son,  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  as  his  successor. 
Though  the  proposal  was  scornfully  rejected,  negotiations 
were  still  carried  011  between  the  two  Kings  for  the  re- 
alization of  the  project,  and  were  probably  only  put  an 
end  to  by  the  calamities  of  Edward's  later  years. 

In  France  misery  and  misgovernment  seemed  to  be 
doing  Edward's  work  more  effectively  than  arms.  The 
miserable  country  found  no  rest  in  itself.  Its  routed 
soldiery  turned  into  free  companies  of  bandits,  while  the 
lords  captured  at  Crecy  or  Poitiers  procured  the  sums 
needed  for  their  ransom  by  extortion  from  the  peasantry. 
The  reforms  demanded  by  the  States-General  which  met 
in  this  agony  of  France  were  frustrated  by  the  treachery 
of  the  Regent,  John's  eldest  son  Charles,  Duke  of  Nor, 
mandy,  till  Paris,  impatient  of  his  weakness  and  misrule, 
rose  in  arms  against  the  Crown.  The  peasants  too,  drivea 


412  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

mad  oy  oppression  and  famine,  rose  in  wild  insurrection, 
butchering  their  lords  and  firing  their  castles  over  the 
whole  face  of  France.  Paris  and  the  Jacquerie,  as  this 
peasant  rising  was  called,  were  at  last  crushed  by  treach- 
ery and  the  sword :  and,  exhausted  as  it  was,  France  still 
backed  the  Regent  in  rejecting  a  treaty  of  peace  by  which 
John,  in  1359,  proposed  to  buy  his  release.  By  this  treaty 
Maine,  Touraine  and  Poitou  in  the  south,  Normandy, 
Guisnes,  Ponthieu,  and  Calais  in  the  west  were  ceded  to 
the  English  King.  On  its  rejection  Edward,  in  1630, 
poured  ravaging  over  the  wasted  land.  Famine,  however, 
proved  its  best  defence.  "  I  could  not  believe,"  said 
Petrarch  of  this  time,  "  that  this  was  the  same  France 
which  I  had  seen  so  rich  and  flourishing.  Nothing  pre- 
sented itself  to  my  eyes  but  a  fearful  solitude,  an  utter 
poverty,  land  uncultivated,  houses  in  ruins.  Even  the 
neighborhood  of  Paris  showed  every  where  marks  of  deso- 
lation and  conflagration.  The  streets  are  deserted,  the 
roads  overgrown  with  weeds,  the  whole  is  a  vast  solitude." 
The  utter  desolation  forced  Edward  to  carry  with  him 
an  immense  train  of  provisions,  and  thousands  of  baggage 
wagons  with  mills,  ovens,  forges,  and  fishing-boats,  formed 
a  long  train  which  streamed  for  six  miles  behind  his  army. 
After  a  fruitless  attempt  upon  Rheims  he  forced  the 
Duke  of  Burgundy  to  conclude  a  treaty  with  him  by  push- 
ing forward  to  Tonnerre,  and  then  descending  the  Seine 
appeared  with  his  army  before  Paris.  But  the  wasted 
country  forbade  a  siege,  and  Edward,  after  summoning 
the  town  in  vain,  was  forced  to  fall  back  for  subsistence 
on  the  Loire.  It  was  during  this  march  that  the  Duke 
of  Normandy's  envoys  overtook  him  with  proposals  of 
peace.  The  misery  of  the  land  had  at  last  bent  Charles 
to  submission,  and  in  May  a  treaty  was  concluded  at  Bre- 
tigny,  a  small  place  to  the  eastward  of  Chartres.  By 
this  treaty  the  English  king  waived  his  claims  on  the 
crown  of  France  and  on  the  Duchy  of  Normandy.  On 
the  other  hand,  his  Duchy  of  Aquitaine,  which  included 
Gascony,  Guienne,  Poitou,  and  Saintonge,  the  Limousin 
and  the  Angoumois,  Perigordand  the  counties  of  Bigorre 
and  Rouerque,  was  not  only  restored  but  free  from  its 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307—1461.  413 

obligations  as  a  French  fief  and  granted  in  full  sov- 
ereignty with  Ponthieu,  Edward's  heritage  from  the  sec- 
ond wife  of  Edward  the  First,  as  well  as  with  Guisnes  and 
his  new  conquest  of  Calais. 

The  Peace  of  Bretigny  set  its  seal  upon  Edward's  glory. 
But  within  England  itself  the  misery  of  the  people  was 
deepening  every  hour.  Men  believed  the  world  to  be  end- 
ing, and  the  judgment  day  to  be  near.  A  few  months 
after  the  Peace  came  a  fresh  swoop  of  the  Black  Death, 
carrying  off  the  Duke  of  Lancaster.  The  repressive 
measures  of  Parliament  and  the  landowners  only  widened 
the  social  chasm  which  parted  employer  from  employed. 
We  can  see  the  growth  of  a  fierce  spirit  of  resistance 
both  to  the  reactionary  efforts  which  were  being  made 
to  bring  back  labor  services  and  to  the  enactments  which 
again  bound  labor  to  the  soil  in  statutes  which  strove 
in  vain  to  repress  the  strikes  Jlnd  combinations  which 
became  frequent  in  the  towns  and  the  more  formidable 
gatherings  of  villeins  and  "  fugitive  serfs  "  in  the  country 
at  large.  A  statute  of  later  date  throws  light  on  the  nature 
of  the  resistance  of  the  last.  It  tells  us  that  "  villeins  and 
holders  of  land  in  villeinage  withdrew  their  customs  and 
services  from  their  lords,  having  attached  themselves  to 
other  persons  who  maintained  and  abetted  them,  and 
who  under  color  of  exemplifications  from  Domesday  of 
the  manors  and  villages  where  they  dwelt  claimed  to  be 
quit  of  all  manner  of  services  either  of  their  body  or  of 
their  lands,  and  would  suffer  no  distress  or  other  course 
of  justice  to  be  taken  against  them ;  the  villeins  aiding 
their  maintain ers  by  threatening  the  officers  of  their  lords 
with  peril  to  life  and  limb  as  well  by  open  assemblies  as 
confederacies  to  support  each  other."  It  would  seem 
not  only  as  if  the  villein  was  striving  to  resist  the  reac- 
tionary tendency  of  the  lords  of  manors  to  regain  his 
labor  service  but  that  in  the  general  overturning  of 
social  institutions  the  copyholder  was  struggling  to 
make  himself  a  freeholder,  and  the  farmer  to  be  recog- 
nized as  proprietor  of  the  demesne  he  held  on  lease. 

A  more  terrible  outcome  of  the  general  suffering  was 
seen  in  a  new  revolt  against  the  whole  system  of  social 


414  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

inequality  which  had  till  then  passed  unquestioned  as 
the  divine  order  of  the  world.  The  Peace  was  hardly 
signed  when  the  cry  of  the  poor  found  a  terrible  utter- 
ance in  the  words  of  "  a  mad  priest  of  Kent "  as  the 
courtly  Froissart  calls  him,  who  for  twenty  years  to  come 
found  audience  for  his  sermons  in  spite  of  interdict  and 
imprisonment  in  the  stout  yeomen  who  gathered  round 
him  in  the  church-yards  of  Kent. "  Mad"  as  the  landowners 
held  him  to  be,  it  was  in  the  preaching  of  John  Ball  that 
England  first  listened  to  a  declaration  of  the  natural 
equality  and  rights  of  man.  "  Good  people,"  cried  the 
preacher,  "  things  will  never  be  well  in  England  so  long 
as  goods  be  not  in  common,  and  so  long  as  there  be  vil- 
leins and  gentlemen.  By  what  right  are  they  whom  we 
call  lords  greater  folk  than  we  ?  On  what  grounds  have 
they  deserved  it  ?  Why  do  they  hold  us  in  serfage  ?  If 
we  all  came  of  the  same  ft,ther  and  mother,  of  Adam  and 
Eve,  how  can  they  say  or  prove  that  they  are  better  than 
we,  if  it  be  not  that  they  make  us  gain  for  them  by  our 
toil  what  they  spend  in  their  pride  ?  They  are  clothed 
in  velvet  and  warm  in  their  furs  and  their  ermines,  while 
we  are  covered  with  rags.  They  have  wine  and  spices 
and  fair  bread  ;  and  we  oat-cake  and  straw,  and  water  to 
drink.  They  have  leisure  and  fine  houses ;  we  have  pain 
and  labor,  the  rain  and  the  wind  in  the  fields.  And  yet 
it  is  of  us  and  of  our  toil  that  these  men  hold  their  state." 
It  was  the  tyranny  of  property  that  then  as  ever  roused 
the  defiance  of  socialism.  A  spirit  fatal  to  the  whole 
system  of  the  Middle  Ages  breathed  in  the  popular  rime 
which  condensed  the  levelling  doctrine  of  John  Ball : 

"  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?" 

More  impressive,  because  of  the  very  restraint  and 
moderation  of  its  tone,  is  the  poem  in  which  William 
Longland  began  at  the  same  moment  to  embody  with  a 
terrible  fidelity  all  the  darker  and  sterner  aspects  of  the 
time,  its  social  revolt,  its  moral  and  religious  awakening, 
the  misery  of  the  poor,  the  selfishness  and  corruption  of 
the  rich.  Nothing  brings  more  vividly  home  to  us  the 


FRANCE  AT  THE  TREATY  OF  BRJCTIGyY 


fif/fan/.  Ctrirh  <<•  Co.  Miirayo. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461  415 

social  chasm  which  in  the  fourteenth  century  severed  the 
rich  from  the  poor  than  the  contrast  between  his  "  Com- 
plaint of  Piers  the  Ploughman  "  and  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales."  The  world  of  wealth  and  ease  and  laughter 
through  which  the  courtly  Chaucer  moves  with  eyes 
downcast  as  in  a  pleasant  dream  is  a  far  off  world  of 
wrong  and  of  ungodliness  to  the  gaunt  poet  of  the  poor. 
Born  probably  in  Shropshire,  where  he  had  been  put  to 
school  and  received  minor  orders  as  a  clerk,  "Long  Will," 
as  Longland  was  nicknamed  from  his  tall  stature,  found 
his  way  at  an  early  age  to  London,  and  earned  a  miser- 
able livelihood  there  by  singing  "  placebos  "  and  "  diriges  " 
in  the  stately  funerals  of  his  day.  Men  took  the  moody 
clerk  for  a  madman ;  his  bitter  poverty  quickened  the 
defiant  pride  that  made  him  loath,  as  he  tells  us,  to  bow  to 
the  gay  lords  and  dames  who  rode  decked  in  silver  and 
minivere  along  the  Cheap  or  to  exchange  a  "  God  save 
you"  with  the  law  sergeants  as  he  passed  their  new 
house  in  the  Temple.  His  world  is  the  world  of  the 
poor :  he  dwells  on  the  poor  man's  life,  on  his  hunger 
and  toil,  his  rough  revelry  and  his  despair,  with  the  nar- 
row intensity  of  a  man  who  has  no  outlook  beyond  it. 
The  narrowness,  the  misery,  the  monotony  of  the  life  he 
paints  rerlect  themselves  in  his  verse.  It  is  only  here  and 
there  that  a  love  of  nature  or  a  grim  earnestness  of  wrath 
quickens  his  rime  into  poetry ;  there  is  not  a  gleam  of 
the  bright  human  sympathy  of  Chaucer,  of  his  fresh  de- 
light in  the  gayety,  the  tenderness,  the  daring  of  the 
world  about  him,  of  his  picturesque  sense  of  even  its 
coarsest  contrasts,  of  his  delicate  irony,  of  his  courtly  wit. 
The  cumbrous  allegory,  the  tedious  platitudes,  the  rimed 
texts  from  Scripture  which  form  the  staple  of  Longland's 
work,  are  only  broken  here  and  there  by  phrases  of  a 
shrewd  common  sense,  by  bitter  outbursts,  by  pictures 
of  a  broad  Hogarthian  humor.  What  chains  one  to  the 
poem  is  its  deep  undertone  of  sadness  :  the  world  is  out 
of  joint,  and  the  gaunt  rimer  who  stalks  silently  along 
the  Strand  has  no  faith  in  his  power  to  put  it  right. 

Londoner  as  he  is,  Will's  fancy  flies  far  from  the  sin 
and  suffering  of  the  great  city  to  a  May-morning  in  the 


416  HISTORY   OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

Malvern  Hills.  "  I  was  very  forwandered  and  went  me 
to  rest  under  a  broad  bank  by  a  burn  side,  and  as  I  lay 
and  leaned  and  looked  in  the  water  I  slumbered  in  a 
sleeping,  it  sweyved  (sounded)  so  merry."  Just  as 
Chaucer  gathers  the  typical  figures  of  the  world  he 
saw  into  his  pilgrim  train,  so  the  dreamer  gathers  into  a 
wide  field  his  army  of  traders  and  chafferers,  of  hermits 
and  solitaries,  of  minstrels,  "•  japers  and  jinglers,"  bid- 
ders and  beggars,  ploughmen  that  "  in  setting  and  in 
sowing  swonken  (toil)  full  hard,"  pilgrims  "  with  their 
wenches  after,"  weavers  and  laborers,  burgess  and  bond- 
man, lawyer  and  scrivener,  court-haunting  bishops,  friars, 
and  pardoners  "  parting  the  silver"  with  the  parish  priest. 
Their  pilgrimage  is  not  to  Canterbury  but  to  Truth  ;  their 
guide  to  Truth  neither  clerk  nor  priest  but  Peterkin  the 
Ploughman,  whom  they  find  ploughing  in  his  field.  He 
it  is  who  bids  the  knight  no  more  wrest  gifts  from  his 
tenant  nor  misdo  with  the  poor.  "  Though  he  be  thine 
underling  here,  well  may  hap  in  heaven  that  he  be 
worthier  set  and  with  more  bliss  than  thou.  .  .  .  For  in 
charnel  at  church  churles  be  evil  to  know,  or  a  knight 
from  a  knave  there."  The  gospel  of  quality  is  backed 
by  the  gospel  of  labor.  The  aim  of  the  Ploughman  is  to 
work,  and  to  make  the  world  work  with  him.  He  warns 
the  laborer  as  he  warns  the  knight.  Hunger  is  God's 
instrument  in  bringing  the  idlest  to  toil,  and  Hunger 
waits  to  work  her  will  on  the  idler  and  the  waster.  On 
the  eve  of  the  great  struggle  between  wealth  and  labor, 
Longland  stands  alone  in  his  fairness  to  both,  in  his 
shrewd  political  and  religious  common  sense.  In  the 
face  of  the  popular  hatred  which  was  to  gather  round 
John  of  Gaunt,  he  paints  the  Duke  in  a  famous  apologue 
as  the  cat  who,  greedy  as  she  might  be,  at  any  rate  keeps 
the  noble  rats  from  utterly  devouring  the  mice  of  the 
people.  Though  the  poet  is  loyal  to  the  Church,  he  pro- 
claims a  righteous  life  to  be  better  than  a  host  of  indul- 
gences, and  God  sends  His  pardon  to  Piers  when  priests 
dispute  it.  But  he  sings  as  a  man  conscious  of  his 
loneliness  and  without  hope.  It  is  only  in  a  dream  that 
he  sees  Corruption,  "  Lady  Mead,"  brought  to  trial,  and 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461.  417 

the  world  repenting  at  the  preaching  of  Reason.  In  the 
waking  life  reason  finds  no  listeners.  The  poet  himself 
is  looked  upon  —  he  tells  us  bitterly  —  as  a  madman. 
There  is  a  terrible  despair  in  the  close  of  his  later  poem, 
where  the  triumph  of  Christ  is  only  followed  by  the 
reign  of  Antichrist ;  where  Contrition  slumbers  amidst 
the  revel  of  Death  and  Sin  ;  and  Conscience,  hard  beset 
by  Pride  and  Sloth,  rouses  himself  with  a  last  effort,  and 
seizing  his  pilgrim  staff,  wanders  over  the  world  to  find 
Piers  Ploughman. 

The  strife  indeed  which  Longland  would  have  averted 
raged  only  the  fiercer  as  the  dark  years  went  by.  If  the 
Statutes  of  Laborers  were  powerless  for  their  immediate 
ends,  either  in  reducing  the  actual  rate  of  wages  or  in 
restricting  the  mass  of  floating  labor  to  definite  areas  of 
employment,  they  proved  effective  in  sowing  hatred  be- 
tween employer  and  emplo}red,  between  rich  and  poor. 
But  this  social  rift  was  not  the  only  rift  which  was  open- 
ing amidst  the  distress  and  misery  of  the  time.  The 
close  of  William  Longland's  poem  is  the  prophecy  of  a 
religious  revolution ;  and  the  way  for  such  a  revolution 
was  being  paved  by  the  growing  bitterness  of  strife  be- 
tween England  and  the  Papacy.  In  spite  of  the  sharp 
protests  from  king  and  parliament  the  need  for  money  at 
Avignon  was  too  great  to  allow  any  relaxation  in  th« 
Papal  claims.  Almost  on  the  eve  of  Cregy  Edward  took 
the  decisive  step  of  forbidding  the  entry  into  England  of 
any  Papal  bulls  or  documents  interfering  with  the  rights 
of  presentation  belonging  to  private  patrons.  But  the 
tenacity  of  Rome  was  far  from  loosening  its  grasp  on  this 
source  of  revenue  for  all  Edward's  protests.  Cre^y,  how- 
ever, gave  a  new  boldness  to  the  action  of  the  state,  and 
a  Statute  of  Pro  visors  was  passed  by  the  Parliament  in 
1351  which  again  asserted  the  rights  of  the  English 
Church,  and  enacted  that  all  who  infringed  them  by  the 
introduction  of  Papal  "provisors"  should  suffer  impris- 
onment. But  resistance  to  provisors  only  brought  fresh 
vexations.  The  patrons  who  withstood  a  Papal  nominee 
in  the  name  of  the  law  were  summoned  to  defend  them- 
selves in  the  Papal  Court.  From  that  moment  tha 

27 


418  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

supremacy  of  the  Papal  law  over  the  law  of  the  land  be- 
came a  great  question  in  which  the  lesser  question  of  pro- 
visors  merged.  The  pretension  of  the  Court  of  Avignon 
was  met  in  1353  by  a  statute  which  forbade  any  ques- 
tioning of  judgments  rendered  in  the  king's  courts  or 
any  prosecution  of  a  suit  in  foreign  courts  under  pain  of 
outlawry,  perpetual  imprisonment,  or  banishment  from 
the  land.  It  was  this  act  of  Prsemunire — as  it  came  in 
after  renewals  to  be  called — which  furnished  so  terrible  a 
weapon  to  the  Tudors  in  their  later  strife  with  Home. 
But  the  papacy  paid  little  heed  to  these  warnings,  and 
its  obstinacy  in  still  receiving  suits  and  appeals  in  de- 
fiance of  this  statute  roused  the  pride  of  a  conquering 
people.  England  was  still  fresh  from  her  glory  at  Bre- 
tigny  when  Edward  appealed  to  the  Parliament  of  1365. 
Complaints,  he  said,  were  constantly  being  made  by  his 
subjects  to  the  Pope  as  to  matters  which  were  cognizable 
in  the  King's  courts.  The  practice  of  provisors  was  thus 
maintained  in  the  teeth  of  the  laws,  and  "  the  laws, 
usages,  ancient  customs,  and  franchises  of  his  kingdom 
were  thereby  much  hindered,  the  King's  crown  degraded, 
and  his  person  defamed."  The  King's  appeal  was  hotly 
met.  "  Biting  words,"  which  it  was  thought  wise  to  sup- 
press, were  used  in  the  debate  which  followed,  and  the 
statutes  against  provisors  and  appeals  were  solemnly  con- 
firmed. 

What  gave  point  to  this  challenge  was  the  assent  of 
the  prelates  to  the  proceedings  of  the  Parliament ;  and 
the  pride  of  Urban  V.  at  once  met  it  by  a  counter-defiance. 
He  demanded  with  threats  the  payment  of  the  annual 
sum  of  a  thousand  marks  promised  by  King  John  in  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  suzerainty  of  the  See  of  Rome. 
The  insult  roused  the  temper  of  the  realm.  The  King 
laid  the  demand  before  Parliament,  and  both  houses 
replied  that  "  neither  King  John  nor  any  king  could  put 
himself,  his  kingdom,  nor  his  people  under  subjection 
save  with  their  accord  or  assent."  John's  submission 
had  been  made  "without  their  assent  and  against  his 
coronation  oath,"  and  they  pledged  themselves,  should 
the  Pope  attempt  to  enforce  his  claim,  to  resist  him  with 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  419 

all  their  power.  Even  Urban  shrank  from  imperilling 
the  Papacy  by  any  further  demands,  and  the  claim  to  a 
Papal  lordship  over  England  was  never  again  heard  of. 
But  the  struggle  had  brought  to  the  front  a  man  who 
was  destined  to  give  a  far  wider  scope  and  significance  to 
this  resistance  to  Rome  than  any  as  yet  dreamed  of. 
Nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the  contrast  between 
the  obscurity  of  John  Wyclif  s  earlier  life  and  the  fulness 
and  vividness  of  our  knowledge  of  him  during  the  twenty 
years  which  preceded  its  close.  Born  in  the  earlier  part 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  he  had  already  passed  middle 
age  when  he  was  appointed  to  the  mastership  of  Balliol 
College,  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  and  recognized  as 
first  among  the  schoolmen  of  his  day.  Of  all  the  scho- 
lastic doctors  those  of  England  had  been  throughout  the 
keenest  and  most  daring  in  philosophical  speculation.  A 
reckless  audacity  and  love  of  novelty  was  the  common 
note  of  Bacon,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Ockham,  as  against  the 
sober  and  more  disciplined  learning  of  the  Parisian 
schoolmen,  Albert  and  Thomas  Aquinas.  The  decay  of 
the  University  of  Paris  during  the  English  wars  was 
transferring  her  intellectual  supremacy  to  Oxford,  and  in 
Oxford  Wyclif  stood  without  a  rival.  From  his  pre- 
decessor, Bradwardine,  whose  work  as  a  scholastic  teacher 
he  carried  on  in  the  speculative  treatises  he  published 
during  this  period,  he  inherited  the  tendency  to  a  pre- 
destinarian  Augustinianism  which  formed  the  ground- 
work of  his  later  theological  revolt.  His  debt  to  Ock 
ham  revealed  itself  in  his  earliest  efforts  at  Church 
reform.  Undismayed  by  the  thunder  and  excommunica- 
tions of  the  Church,  Ockham  had  supported  the  Emperor 
Lewis  of  Bavaria  in  his  recent  struggle,  and  he  had  not 
shrunk  in  his  enthusiasm  for  the  Empire  from  attacking 
the  foundations  of  the  Papal  supremacy  or  from  asserting 
the  rights  of  the  civil  power.  The  spare,  emaciated 
frame  of  Wyclif,  weakened  by  study  and  asceticism, 
hardly  promised  a  reformer  who  would  carry  on  the 
stormy  work  of  Ockham  ;  but  within  this  frail  form  lay 
a  temper  quick  and  restless,  an  immense  energy,  an  im- 
movable conviction,  an  unconquerable  pride.  The  per- 


420  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

sonal  charm  which  ever  accompanies  real  greatness  only 
deepened  the  influence  he  derived  from  the  spotless 
purity  of  his  life.  As  yet  indeed  even  Wyclif  himself 
can  hardly  have  suspected  the  immense  range  of  his  in- 
tellectual power.  It  was  only  the  struggle  that  lay 
before  him  which  revealed  in  the  dry  and  subtle  school- 
man the  founder  of  our  later  English  prose,  a  master  of 
popular  invective,  of  irony,  of  persuasion,  a  dexterous 
politician,  an  audacious  partisan,  the  organizer  of  a  re- 
ligious order,  the  unsparing  assailant  of  abuses,  the 
boldest  and  most  indefatigable  of  controversialists,  the 
first  Reformer  who  dared,  when  deserted  and  alone,  to 
question  and  deny  the  creed  of  the  Christendom  around 
him,  to  break  through  the  tradition  of  the  past,  and  with 
his  last  breath  to  assert  the  freedom  of  religious  thought 
against  the  dogmas  of  the  Papacy. 

At  the  moment  of  the  quarrel  with  Pope  Urban,  how- 
ever, Wyclif  was  far  from  having  advanced  to  such  a 
position  as  this.  As  the  most  prominent  of  English 
scholars  it  was  natural  that  he  should  come  forward  in 
defence  of  the  independence  and  freedom  of  the  English 
Church;  and  he  published  a  formal  refutation  of  the 
claims  advanced  by  the  Papacy  to  deal  at  its  will  with 
church  property  in  the  form  of  a  report  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary debates  which  we  have  described.  As  yet  his 
quarrel  was  not  with  the  doctrines  of  Rome  but  with  its 
practices  ;  and  it  was  on  the  principles  of  Ockham  that 
he  defended  the  Parliament's  refusal  of  the  "  tribute " 
which  was  claimed  by  Urban.  But  his  treatise  on  u  The 
Kingdom  of  God,"  "De  Dominio  Divino,"  which  can 
hardly  have  been  written  later  than  1368,  shows  the 
breadth  of  the  ground  he  was  even  now  prepared  to  take 
up.  In  this,  the  most  famous  of  his  works,  Wyclif  bases 
his  argument  on  a  distinct  ideal  of  society.  All  author- 
ity, to  use  his  own  expression,  is  "  founded  in  grace." 
Dominion  in  the  highest  sense  is  in  God  alone  ;  it  is  God 
who  as  the  suzerain  of  the  universe  deals  out  His  rule 
in  fief  to  rulers  in  their  various  stations  on  tenure  of 
their  obedience  to  himself.  It  was  easy  to  object  that 
in  such  a  case  "  dominion "  could  never  exist,  since 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  421 

mortal  sin  is  a  breach  of  such  a  tenure,  and  all  men  sin. 
But,  as  Wyclif  urged  it,  the  theory  is  a  purely  ideal  one. 
In  actual  practice  he  distinguishes  between  dominion 
and  power,  power  which  the  wicked  may  have  by  God's 
permission,  and  to  which  the  Christian  must  submit  from 
motives  of  obedience  to  God.  In  his  own  scholastic 
phrase,  so  strangely  perverted  afterwards,  here  on  earth 
"  God  must  obey  the  devil."  But  whether  in  the  ideal 
or  practical  view  of  the  matter  all  power  and  dominion 
was  of  God.  It  was  granted  by  Him  not  to  one  person, 
His  Vicar  on  earth,  as  the  Papacy  alleged,  but  to  all. 
The  King  was  as  truly  God's  Vicar  as  the  Pope.  The 
royal  power  was  as  sacred  as  the  ecclesiastical,  and  as 
complete  over  temporal  things,  even  over  the  temporal- 
ities of  the  Church,  as  that  of  the  Church  over  spiritual 
things.  So  far  as  the  question  of  Church  and  State 
therefore  was  concerned  the  distinction  between  tha 
ideal  and  practical  view  of  "  dominion  "  was  of  little  ac- 
count. Wyclif  s  application  of  the  theory  to  the  indi- 
vidual conscience  was  of  far  higher  and  wider  importance. 
Obedient  as  each  Christian  might  be  to  king  or  priest, 
he  himself,  as  a  possessor  of  "  dominion,"  held  immedi- 
ately of  God.  The  throne  of  God  Himself  was  the  tri- 
bunal of  personal  appeal.  What  the  Reformers  of  the 
sixteenth  century  attempted  to  do  by  their  theory  of 
Justification  by  Faith  Wyclif  attempted  to  do  by  his 
theory  of  Dominion,  a  theory  which,  in  establishing  a  di- 
rect relation  between  man  and  God,  swept  away  the 
whole  basis  of  a  mediating  priesthood,  the  very  founda- 
tion on  which  the  mediaeval  church  was  built. 

As  yet  the  full  bearing  of  these  doctrines  was  little 
seen.  But  the  social  and  religious  excitement  which  we 
have  described  was  quickened  by  the  renewal  of  the  war, 
arid  the  general  suffering  and  discontent  gathered  bitter- 
ness when  the  success  which  had  flushed  England  with  a 
new  and  warlike  pride  passed  into  a  long  series  of  dis- 
asters in  which  men  forgot  the  glories  of  Cre£y  and 
Poitiers.  Triumph  as  it  seemed,  the  treaty  of  Bretigny 
was  really  fatal  to  Edward's  cause  in  the  south  of  France. 
By  the  cession  of  Aquitaine  to  him  in  full  sovereignty 


422  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  traditional  claim  on  which  his  strength  rested  lost  its 
force.     The  people  of  the  south  had  clung  to  their  Duke, 
even  though  their  Duke  was  a  foreign  ruler.     The}-  had 
stubbornly  resisted  incorporation  with  Northern  France. 
While  preserving,  however,  their  traditional  fealty  to  the 
descendants  of  Eleanor  they  still  clung  to  the  equally 
traditional  suzerainty  of  the  Kings  of  France.     But  the 
treaty  of  Bretigny  not  only  severed  them  from  the  realm 
of  France,  it  subjected  them  to   the  realm  of  England. 
Edward  ceased  to  be  their  hereditary  Duke,  he  became 
simply  an  English  king  ruling  Aquitaine  as  an  English 
dominion.     If  the  Southerners   loved  the  North-French 
little,  they  loved  the  English  less,  and  the  treaty  which 
thus  changed  their  whole    position  was  followed  by  a 
a  quick  revulsion  of  feeling  from  the  Garonne  to  the 
Pyrenees.     The  Gascon  nobles  declared  that  John  had 
no  right  to  transfer  their  fealty  to  another  and  to  sever 
them  from  the  realm  of  France.     The  city  of  Rochelle 
prayed  the  French  King  not  to  release  it  from  its  fealty 
to  him.     "  We  will  obey  the  English  with  our  lips,"  said 
its  citizens,  "  but  our  hearts  shall  never  be  moved  towards 
them."     Edward  strove  to  meet  this  passion  for  local  in- 
dependence, this  hatred  of  being  ruled  from  London,  by 
sending  the  Black  Prince  to  Bordeaux  and  investing 
him,  in  1362,  with  the  Duchy  of  Aquitaine.     But  the  new 
Duke  held  his  Duchy  as  a  fief  from  the  English  King, 
and    the    grievance    of  the    Southerners    was  left   un- 
touched.    Charles  V.,  who   succeeded  his  father  John 
in  1364,  silently  prepared  to  reap   this  harvest   of  dis- 
content.    Patient,  wary,  unscrupulous,  he  was  hardly 
crowned  before  he  put  an  end  to  the  war  which  had  gone 
on  without  a  pause  in  Britanny  by  accepting  homage 
from  the  claimant  whom  France  had  hitherto  opposed. 
Through  Bertrand  du  Guesclin,  a  fine  soldier  whom  his 
sagacity  had  discovered,  he  forced  the  King  of  Navarre 
to  a  peace  which  closed  the  fighting  in   Normandy.     A 
more  formidable  difficulty  in  the  way  of  pacification  and 
order  lay  in   the  Free  Companies,  a  union   of  marauders 
whom  the  disbanding  of  both  armies  after  the  peace  had 
set  free  to  harrv  the  wasted  land,  and  whom  the  King's 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  428 

military  resources  were  insufficient  to  cope  with.  It  was 
the  stroke  by  which  Charles  cleared  his  realm  of  these 
scourges  which  forced  on  a  new  struggle  with  the  Eng- 
lish in  the  south. 

In  the  judgment  of  the  English  court  the  friendship 
of  Castille  was  of  the  first  importance  for  the  security  of 
Aquitaine.  Spain  was  the  strongest  naval  power  of  the 
western  world,  and  not  only  would  the  ports  of  Guienne 
be  closed  but  its  communication  with  England  would  be 
at  once  cut  off  by  the  appearance  of  a  joint  French  and 
Spanish  fleet  in  the  Channel.  It  was  with  satisfaction, 
therefore,  that  Edward  saw  the  growth  of  a  bitter  hostil- 
ity between  Charles  and  the  Castilian  King,  Pedro  the 
Cruel,  through  the  murder  of  his  wife,  Blanche  of  Bour- 
bon, the  French  King's  sister-in-law.  Henry  of  Trasta- 
mara,  a  bastard  son  of  Pedro's  father  Alfonso  the 
Eleventh,  had  long  been  a  refugee  at  the  French  court, 
and  soon  after  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  Charles,  in  his  de- 
sire to  revenge  this  murder  on  Pedro,  gave  Henry  aid  in 
an  attempt  on  the  Castilian  throne.  It  was  impossible 
for  England  to  look  on  with  indifference  while  a  depend- 
ant of  the  French  King  became  master  of  Castille  ;  and 
in  1362  a  treaty  offensive  and  defensive  was  concluded 
between  Pedro  and  Edward  the  Third.  The  time  was 
not  come  for  open  war  ;  but  the  subtle  policy  of  Charles 
saw  in  this  strife  across  the  Pyrenees  an  opportunity 
both  of  detaching  Castille  from  the  English  cause  and  of 
ridding  himself  of  the  Free  Companies.  With  charac- 
teristic caution  he  dexterously  held  himself  in  the  back- 
ground while  he  made  use  of  the  Pope,  who  had  been 
threatened  by  the  Free  Companies  in  his  palace  at 
Avignon,  and  was  as  anxious  to  get  rid  of  them  as  him- 
self. Pedro's  cruelty,  misgovernment,  and  alliance  with 
the  Moslem  of  Cordova,  served  as  grounds  for  a  crusade 
which  was  proclaimed  by  Pope  Urban ;  and  Du  Gues- 
clin,  who  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  expedition,  found 
in  the  Papal  treasury  and  in  the  hope  of  booty  from  an 
unravaged  land  means  of  gathering  the  marauders  round 
his  standard.  As  soon  as  these  Crusaders  crossed  the 
Ebro  Pedro  was  deserted  by  his  subjects,  and  in  1366 


424  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Henry  of  Trastamara  saw  himself  crowned  without  a 
struggle  at  Burgos,  as  King  of  Castille.  Pedro  with  his 
two  daughters  fled  for  shelter  to  Bordeaux,  and  claimed 
the  aid  promised  in  the  treaty.  The  lords  of  Aquitaine 
shrank  from  fighting  for  such  a  cause,  but  in  spite  of 
their  protests  and  the  reluctance  of  the  English  council 
to  embark  in  so  distant  a  struggle,  Edward  held  that  he 
had  no  choice  save  to  replace  his  ally,  for  to  leave  Henry 
seated  on  the  throne  was  to  leave  Aquitaiue  to  be 
crushed  between  France  and  Castille. 

The  after  course  of  the  war  proved  that  in  his  antici- 
pations of  the  fatal  result  of  a  combination  of  the  two 
powers  Edward  was  right,  but  his  policy  jarred  not  only 
against  the  universal  craving  for  rest,  but  against  the 
moral  sense  of  the  world.  The  Black  Prince,  however, 
proceeded  to  carry  out  his  father's  design  in  tne  teeth  of 
the  general  opposition.  His  call  to  arms  robbed  Henry 
of  the  aid  of  those  English  Companies  who  had  marched 
till  now  with  the  rest  of  the  crusaders,  but  who  returned 
at  once  to  the  standard  of  the  Prince;  the  passes  of 
Navarre  were  opened  with  gold,  and  in  the  beginning  of 

1367  the  English  army  crossed  the  Pyrenees.     Advanc- 
ing to  the  Ebvo  the  Prince  offered  battle  at  Navarete 
with  an   army  already  reduced  by  famine  and  disease  in 
its  terrible  winter  march,  and  Henry  with  double  his 
numbers  at  once  attacked  him.     But   in   spite  of  the 
obstinate  courage  of  the  Castilian  troops  the  discipline 
and  skill  of  the  English  soldiers  once  more  turned  the 
wavering  day  into  a  victory.     Du  Guesclin  was  taken, 
Henry  fled  across  the  Pyrenees,  and  Pedro   was  again 
seated  on  his  throne.     The  pay,  however,  which  he  had 
promised  was  delayed ;  and  the  Prince,  whose  army  had 
been  thinned  by  disease  to  a  fifth  of  its  numbers,  and 
whose  strength  never  recovered  from  the  hardships  of 
this  campaign,  fell  back  sick  and  beggared  to  Aquitaine. 
He  had  hardly  returned  when  his  work  was  undone.    In 

1368  Henry  re-entered  Castille;  its  towns  threw  open 
their   gates  ;  a  general   rising   chased    Pedro   from    the 
throne,  and  a  final  battle  in  the  spring  of  1369  saw  his 
utter  overthrow.     His  murder  by  Henry's  hand  left  the 


THE   PAKLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  425 

bastard  undisputed  master  of  Castille.  Meanwhile  the 
Black  Prince,  sick  and  disheartened,  was  hampered  at 
Bordeaux  by  the  expenses  of  the  campaign  which  Pedro 
had  left  unpaid.  To  defray  his  debt  he  was  driven,  in 
1368,  to  lay  a  hearth-tax  on  Aquitaine,  and  the  tax 
served  as  a  pretext  fo*  an  outbreak  of  the  long-hoarded 
discontent.  Charles  was  now  ready  for  open  action. 
He  had  won  over  the  most  powerful  among  the  Gascon 
nobles,  and  their  influence  secured  the  rejection  of  the 
tax  in  a  Parliament  of  the  province  which  met  at  Bor- 
deaux. The  Prince,  pressed  by  debt,  persisted  against 
the  counsel  of  his  wisest  advisers  in  exacting  it ;  and  the 
lords  of  Aquitaine  at  once  appealed  to  the  King  of 
France.  Such  an  appeal  was  a  breach  of  the  treaty  of 
Bretigny  in  which  the  French  King  had  renounced  his 
sovereignty  over  the  south ;  but  Charles  had  craftily  de- 
layed year  after  year  the  formal  execution  of  the  renun- 
ciations stipulated  in  the  treaty,  and  he  was  still  able  to 
treat  it  as  not  binding  on  him.  The  success  of  Henr^of 
Trastamara  decided  him  to  take  immediate  action,  and 
in  1369  he  summoned  the  Black  Prince  as  Duke  of 
Aquitaine  to  meet  the  appeal  of  the  Gascon  lords  in  his 
court. 

The  Prince  was  maddened  by  the  summons.  "I  will 
come,"  he  replied,  "  but  with  helmet  on  head,  and  with 
sixty  thousand  men  at  my  back."  War,  however,  had 
hardly  been  declared  when  the  ability  with  which 
Charles  had  laid  his  plans  was  seen  in  his  seizure  of  Pon- 
thieu  and  in  a  rising  of  the  whole  country  south  of  the 
Garonne.  Du  Guesclin  returned  in  1370  from  Spain  to 
throw  life  into  the  French  attack.  Two  armies  entered 
Guienne  from  the  east;  and  a  hundred  castles  with  La 
Reole  and  Limoges  threw  open  their  gates  to  Du  Guesclin. 
But  the  march  of  an  English  army  from  Calais  upon 
Paris  recalled  him  from  the  south  to  guard  the  capital 
at  a  moment  when  the  English  leader  advanced  to  re- 
cover Limoges,  and  the  Black  Prince  borne  in  a  litter  to 
its  walls  stormed  the  town  and  sullied  by  a  merciless 
massacre  of  its  inhabitants  the  fame  of  his  earlier  ex- 
ploit*. Sickness,  however,  recalled  him  home  in  the  spring 


426  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  1371 ;  and  the  war,  protracted  by  the  caution  of 
Charles,  who  forbad  his  armies  to  engage,  did  little  but 
exhaust  the  energy  and  treasure  of  England.  As  yet 
indeed  the  French  attack  had  made  small  impression  on 
the  south,  where  the  English  troops  stoutly  held  their 
ground  against  Du  Guesclin's  inroads.  But  the  pro- 
tracted war  drained  Edward's  •"  resources,  while  the 
diplomacy  of  Charles  was  "busy  in  rousing  fresh  dangers 
from  Scotland  and  Castillo.  It  was  in  vain  that  Edward 
looked  for  allies  to  the  Flemish  towns.  The  male  line 
of  the  Counts  of  Flanders  ended  in  Count  Louis  le  Male  ; 
and  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  Margaret  with  Philip, 
Duke  of  Burgundy,  a  younger  brother  of  the  French 
King,  secured  Charles  from  attack  along  his  northern 
border.  In  Scotland  the  death  of  David  Bruce  put  an 
end  to  Edward's  schemes  for  a  reunion  of  the  two  king- 
doms ;  and  his  successor,  Robert  the  Steward,  renewed 
in  1371  the  alliance  with  France. 

Castille  was  a  yet  more  serious  danger ;  and  an  effort 
\ifcich  Edward  made  to  neutralize  its  attack  only  forced 
Henry  of  Trastamara  to  fling  his  whole  weight  into  the 
struggle.  The  two  daughters  of  Pedro  had  remained 
since  their  father's  flight  at  Bordeaux.  The  elder  of 
these  was  now  wedded  to  John  of  Gaunt,  Edward's 
fourth  son,  whom  he  had  created  Duke  of  Lancaster  on 
his  previous  marriage  with  Blanche,  a  daughter  of  Henry 
of  Lancaster  and  the  heiress  of  that  house,  while  the 
younger  was  wedded  to  Edward's  fifth  son,  the  Earl  of 
Cambridge.  Edward's  aim  was  that  of  raising  again  the 
party  of  King  Pedro  and  giving  Henry  of  Trastamara 
work  to  do  at  home  which  would  hinder  his  interposition 
in  the  war  of  Guienne.  It  was  with  this  view  that  John 
of  Gaunt  on  his  marriage  took  the  title  of  King  of  Cas- 
tille. But  no  adherent  of  Pedro's  cause  stirred  in  Spain, 
and  Henry  replied  to  the  challenge  by  sending  a  Spanish 
fleet  to  the  Channel.  A  decisive  victory  which  this  fleet 
won  over  an  English  convoy  off  Rochelle  proved  a  fatal 
blow  to  the  English  cause.  It  wrested  from  Edward  the 
mastery  of  the  seas,  and  cut.  off  all  communication  be- 
tween England  and  Guienne.  Charles  was  at  once 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  427 

roused  to  new  exertions.  Poitou,  Saintonge,  and  the 
Angoumois  yielded  to  his  general  Du  Guesclin;  and 
Rochelle  was  surrendered  by  its  citizens  in  1372.  The 
next  year  saw  a  desperate  attempt  to  restore  the  for- 
tune of  the  English  arms.  A  great  army  under  John  of 
Gaunt  penetrated  into  the  heart  of  France.  But  it  found 
no  foe  to  engage.  Charles  had  forbidden  any  fighting. 
"  If  a  storm  rages  over  the  land,"  said  the  King  coolly, 
"it  disperses  of  itself;  and  so  will  it  be  with  the  Eng- 
lish." Winter  in  fact  overtook  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
in  the  mountains  of  Auvergne,  and  a  mere  fragment  of 
his  host  reached  Bordeaux.  The  failure  of  this  attack 
was  the  signal  for  a  general  defection,  and  ere  the  sum- 
mer of  1374  had  closed  the  two  towns  of  Bordeaux  and 
Bayonne  were  all  that  remained  of  the  English  posses- 
sions in  Southern  France.  Even  these  were  only  saved 
by  the  exhaustion  of  the  conquerors.  The  treasury  of 
Charles  was  as  utterly  drained  as  the  treasury  of  Edward  ; 
and  the  Kings  were  forced  to  a  truce. 

Only  fourteen  years  had  gone  by  since  the  Treaty  of 
Bretigny  raised  England  to  a  height  of  glory  such  as  it 
had  never  known  before.  But  the  years  had  been  years 
of  a  shame  and  Buffering  which  stung  the  people  to  mad- 
ness. Never  had  England  fallen  so  low.  Her  con- 
quests were  lost,  her  shores  insulted,  her  commerce  swept 
from  the  seas.  Within  she  was  drained  by  the  taxation 
and  bloodshed  of  the  war.  Its  popularity  had  wholly 
died  away.  When  the  Commons  were  asked  in  1354 
whether  they  would  assent  to  a  treaty  of  perpetual  peace 
if  they  might  have  it,  "  the  said  Commons  responded  all, 
and  all  together,  4  Yes,  yes  ! ' '  The  population  was 
thinned  by  the  ravages  of  pestilence,  for  till  1369.  which 
saw  its  last  visitation,  the  Black  Death  returned  again 
and  again.  The  social  strife  too  gathered  bitterness  with 
every  effort  at  repression.  It  was  in  vain  that  Parlia- 
ment after  Parliament  increased  the  severity  of  its  laws. 
The  demands  of  the  Parliament  of  1376  show  how  in- 
operative the  previous  Statutes  of  Laborers  had  proved. 
They  prayed  that  constables  be  directed  to  arrest  all  who 
infringed  the  Statute,  that  no  laborer  should  be  allowed 


428  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

to  take  refuge  in  a  town  and  become  an  artisan  if  there 
were  need  of  his  service  in  the  county  from  which  he 
came,  and  that  the  King  would  protect  lords  and  em- 
ployers against  the  threats  of  death  uttered  by  serfs  who 
refused  to  serve.  The  reply  of  the  Royal  Council  shows 
that  statesmen  at  any  rate  were  beginning  to  feel  that 
repression  might  be  pushed  too  far.  The  King  refused 
to  interfere  by  any  further  and  harsher  provisions  be- 
tween employers  and  employed,  and  left  cases  of  breach 
of  law  to  be  dealt  with  in  his  ordinary  courts  of  justice. 
On  the  one  side  he  forbade  the  threatening  gatherings 
which  were  already  common  in  the  country,  but  on  the 
other  he  forbade  the  illegal  exactions  of  the  employers. 
With  such  a  reply,  however,  the  proprietary  class  were 
hardly  likely  to  be  content.  Two  years  later  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Gloucester  called  for  a  Fugitive-slave  Law, 
which  would  have  enabled  lords  to  seize  their  serfs  ia 
whatever  county  or  town  they  found  refuge,  and  in  1379 
they  prayed  that  judges  might  be  sent  five  times  a  year 
into  every  shire  to  enforce  the  Statute  of  Laborers. 

But  the  strife  between  employers  and  employed  was 
not  the  only  rift  which  was  opening  in  the  social  structure. 
Suffering  and  defeat  had  stripped  off  the  veil  Avhich  hid 
from  the  nation  the  shallow  and  selfish  temper  of  Edward 
the  Third.  His  profligacy  was  now  bringing  him  to  a 
premature  old  age.  He  was  sinking  into  the  tool  of  his 
ministers  and  his  mistresses.  The  glitter  and  profusion 
of  his  court,  his  splendid  tournaments,  his  feasts,  his 
Table  Round,  his  new  order  of  chivalry,  the  exquisite 
chapel  of  St.  Stephen  whose  frescoed  walls  were  the  glory 
of  his  palace  at  Westminster,  the  vast  keep  which  crowned 
the  hill  of  Windsor,  had  ceased  to  throw  their  glamour 
round  a  King  who  tricked  his  Parliament  and  swindled 
his  creditors.  Edward  paid  no  debts.  He  had  ruined 
the  wealthiest  bankers  of  Florence  by  a  cool  act  of  bank- 
ruptcy. The  sturdier  Flemish  burghers  only  wrested 
payment  from  him  by  holding  his  royal  person  as  their 
security.  His  own  subjects  fared  no  better  than  foreigners. 
The  prerogative  of  "purveyance,"  by  which  the  King  in 
his  progresses  through  the  country  had  the  right  of  first 


THE     PABLIAMENT.      1807 — 14(51.  429 

purchase  of  all  that  he  needed  at  fair  market  price,  became 
a  galling  oppression  in  the  hands  of  a  bankrupt  King  who 
was  always  moving  from  place  to  place.  "  When  men 
hear  of  your  coming,"  Archbishop  Islip  wrote  to  Edward, 
"  everybody  at  once,  for  sheer  fear,  sets  about  hiding  or 
eating  or  getting  rid  of  their  geese  and  chickens  or  other 
possessions  that  they  may  not  utterly  lose  them  through 
your  arrival.  The  purveyors  and  'servants  of  your  court 
seize  on  men  and  horses  in  the  midst  of  their  field  work. 
They  seize  on  the  very  bullocks  that  are  at  plough  or  at 
sowing,  and  force  them  to  work  for  two  or  three  days  at 
a  time  without  a  penny  of  payment.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
men  make  dole  and  murmur  at  your  approach,  for,  as  the 
truth  is  in  God,  I  myself,  whenever  I  hear  a  rumor  of  it, 
be  I  at  home  or  in  chapter  or  in  church  or  at  study,  nay, 
if  I  am  saying  mass,  even  I  in  my  own  person  tremble  in 
every  limb."  But  these  irregular  exactions  were  little 
beside  the  steady  pressure  of  taxation.  Even  in  the  years 
of  peace  fifteenths  and  tenths,  subsidies  on  wool  and 
subsidies  on  leather,  were  demanded  and  obtained  from 
Parliament ;  and  with  the  outbreak  of  war  the  royal 
demands  became  heavier  and  more  frequent.  As  failure 
followed  failure  the  expenses  of  each  campaign  increased  : 
an  ineffectual  attempt  to  relieve  Rochelle  cost  nearly  a 
million  ;  the  march  of  John  of  Gaunt  through  France 
utterly  drained  the  royal  treasury.  Nor  were  these  legal 
supplies  all  that  the  King  drew  from  the  nation.  He  had 
repudiated  his  pledge  to  abstain  from  arbitrary  taxation 
of  imports  and  exports.  He  sold  monopolies  to  the  mer- 
chants in  exchange  for  increased  customs.  He  wrested 
supplies  from  the  clergy  by  arrangements  with  the  bishops 
or  the  Pope.  There  were  signs  that  Edward  was  longing 
to  rid  himself  of  the  control  of  Parliament  altogether. 
The  power  of  the  Houses  seemed  indeed  as  high  as  ever ; 
great  statutes  were  passed.  Those  of  Provisors  and 
Praernunire  settled  the  relations  of  England  to  the  Roman 
Court.  That  of  Treason  in  1352  defined  that  crime  and 
its  penalties.  That  of  the  Staples  in  1353  regulated  the 
conditions  of  foreign  trade  and  the  privileges  of  the 
merchant  gilds  which  conducted  it.  But  side  by  side 


480  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

with  these  exertions  of  influence  we  note  a  series  of  steady 
encroachments  by  the  Crown  on  the  power  of  the  Houses. 
If  their  petitions  were  granted,  they  were  often  altered 
in  the  royal  ordinance  which  professed  to  embody  them. 
A  plan  of  demanding  supplies  for  three  years  at  once 
rendered  the  annual  assembly  of  Parliament  less  necessary. 
Its  very  existence  was  threatened  by  the  convocation  in 
1352  and  1353  of  occasional  councils  with  but  a  single 
knight  from  every  shire  and  a  single  burgess  from  a  small 
number  of  the  greater  towns,  which  acted  as  Parliament 
and  granted  subsidies. 

What  aided  Edward  above  all  in  eluding  or    defying 
the  constitutional   restrictions  on  arbitrary  taxation,  as 
well  as  in  these  more  insidious  attempts  to  displace  the 
Parliament,  was  the  lessening  of  the  check  which  the 
Baronage  and  the  Church  had  till  now  supplied.     The 
same  causes  which  had  long  been  reducing  the  number 
cf  the  greater  lords  who  formed  the  upper  house  went 
steadily  on.     Under  Edward  the  Second  little  more  than 
seventy  were  commonly  summoned  to  Parliament ;  little 
more  than  forty  were  summoned  under  Edward  the  Third, 
and  of  these  the  bulk  were  now  bound  to  the  Crown, 
partly  by  their  employment  on  its  service,  partly  by  their 
interest  in  the  continuance  of  the  war.     The  heads  of 
the  Baronage  too  were  members  of  the  royal  family. 
Edward  had  carried  out  on  a  far  wider  scale  than  before 
the  policy  which  had  been  more  or  less  adhered  to  from 
the  days  of  Henry  the  Third,  that  of  gathering  up  in  the 
hands  of  the  royal  house  all  the  greater  heritages  of  the 
land.     The  Black  Prince  was  married  to  Joan  of  Kent, 
the  heiress  of  Edward  the  First's  younger  son,  Earl  Ed- 
mund of  Woodstock.     His  marriage  with  the  heiress  of 
the  Earl  of  Ulster  brought  to   the  King's  second  son, 
Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  a  great  part  of  the  posses- 
sions of  the  de  Burghs.     Later  on  the  possessions  of  the 
house  of  Bohun  passed  by  like  matches  to  his  youngest 
son,  Thomas  of  Woodstock,  and  to  his  grandson  Henry 
of  Lancaster.     But  the  greatest  English  heritage  fell  to 
Edward's  third  living  son,  John  of  Gaunt  as  he  was 
called  from  his  birth  at  Ghent  during  his  father's  Flem- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  481 

ish  campaign.  Originally  created  Earl  of  Richmond,  the 
death  of  his  father-in-law,  Henry  of  Lancaster,  and  of 
Henry's  eldest  daughter,  raised  John  in  his  wife's  right 
to  the  Dukedom  of  Lancaster  and  the  Earldoms  of 
Derby,  Leicester,  and  Lincoln.  But  while  the  baronage 
were  thus  bound  to  the  Crown,  they  drifted  more  and 
more  into  an  hostility  with  the  Church  which  in  time 
disabled  the  clergy  from  acting  as  a  check  on  it.  What 
rent  the  ruling  classes  in  twain  was  the  growing  pres- 
sure of  the  war.  The  nobles  and  knighthood  of  the 
country,  already  half  ruined  by  the  rise  in  the  labor  mar- 
ket and  the  attitude  of  the  peasantry,  were  pressed 
harder  than  ever  by  the  repeated  subsidies  which  were 
called  for  by  the  continuance  of  the  struggle.  In  the 
hour  of  their  distress  they  cast  their  eyes  greedily — as  in 
the  Norman  and  Angevin  days — on  the  riches  of  the 
Church.  Never  had  her  wealth  been  greater.  Out  of  a 
population  of  some  three  millions  the  ecclesiastics  num- 
bered between  twenty  and  thirty  thousand.  Wild  tales 
of  their  riches  floated  about  the  country.  They  were 
said  to  own  in  landed  property  alone  more  than  a  third 
of  the  soil,  while  their  "  spiritualities  "  in  dues  and  offer- 
ings amounted  to  twice  the  King's  revenue.  Exagger- 
ated as  such  statements  were,  the  wealth  of  the  Church 
was  really  great ;  but  even  more  galling  to  the  nobles 
was  its  influence  in  the  royal  councils.  The  feudal  bar- 
onage, flushed  with  a  new  pride  by  its  victories  at  Crecj 
and  Poitiers,  looked  with  envy  and  wrath  at  the  throng 
of  bishops  around  the  council-board,  and  attributed  to 
their  love  of  peace  the  errors  and  sluggishness  which  had 
caused,  as  they  held,  the  disasters  of  the  war.  To  rob 
the  Church  of  wealth  and  of  power  became  the  aim  of  a 
great  baronial  party. 

The  efforts  of  the  baronage  indeed  would  have  been 
fruitless  had  the  spiritual  power  of  the  Church  remained 
as  of  old.  But  the  clergy  were  rent  by  their  own  dis- 
sensions. The  higher  prelates  were  busy  with  the  cares 
of  political  office,  and  severed  from  the  lower  priesthood 
by  the  scandalous  inequality  between  the  revenues  of 
the  wealthier  ecclesiastics  and  the  "  poor  parson  "  of  the 


4S2  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

country.  A  bitter  hatred  divided  the  secular  clergy 
from  the  regular ;  and  this  strife  went  fiercely  on  in  the 
Universities.  Fitz-Ralf,  the  Chancellor  of  Oxford,  at- 
tributed to  the  friars  the  decline  which  was  already  being 
felt  in  the  number  of  academical  students,  and  the  Uni- 
versity checked  by  statute  their  practice  of  admitting 
mere  children  into  their  order.  The  clerg3r  too  at  large 
shared  in  the  discredit  and  unpopularity  of  the  Papacy. 
Though  they  suffered  more  than  any  other  class  from  the 
exactions  of  Avignon,  they  were  bound  more  and  more 
to  the  Papal  cause.  The  very  statutes  which  would 
have  protected  them  were  practically  set  aside  by  the 
treacherous  diplomacy  of  the  Crown.  At  home  and 
abroad  the  Roman  see  was  too  useful  for  the  King  to 
come  to  any  actual  breach  with  it.  However  much  Ed- 
ward might  echo  the  bold  words  of  his  Parliament,  he 
shrank  from  an  open  contest  which  would  have  added 
the  Papacy  to  his  many  foes,  and  which  would  at  the 
same  time  have  robbed  him  of  his  most  effective  means 
of  wresting  aids  from  the  English  clergy  by  private  ar- 
rangement with  the  Roman  court.  Rome  indeed  was 
was  brought  to  waive  its  alleged  right  of  appointing  for- 
eigners to  English  livings.  But  a  compromise  was  ar- 
ranged between  the  Pope  and  the  Crown  in  which  both 
united  in  the  spoliation  and  enslavement  of  the  Church. 
The  voice  of  chapters,  of  monks,  of  ecclesiastical  patrons, 
went  henceforth  for  nothing  in  the  election  of  bishops  or 
abbots  or  the  nomination  to  livings  in  the  gift  of  church- 
men. The  Crown  recommended  those  whom  it  chose  to 
the  Pope,  and  the  Pope  nominated  them  to  see  or  cure 
of  souls.  The  treasuries  of  both  King  and  Pope  profited 
by  the  arrangement ;  but  we  can  hardly  wonder  that 
after  a  betrayal  such  as  this  the  clergy  placed  little  trust 
in  statutes  or  royal  protection,  and  bowed  humbly  be- 
fore the  claims  of  Rome. 

But  what  weakened  the  clergy  most  was  their  sever- 
ance from  the  general  sympathies  of  the  nation,  their 
selfishness,  and  the  worldliness  of  their  temper.  Im- 
mense as  their  wealth  was,  they  bore  as  little  as  they 
could  of  the  common  burdens  of  the  realm.  They  were 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  433 

still  resolute  to  assert  their  exemption  from  the  common 
justice  of  the  land,  though  the  mild  punishments  of  the 
bishops'  courts  carried  as  little  dismay  as  ever  into  the 
mass  of  disorderly  clerks.  But  privileged  as  they  thus 
held  themselves  against  all  interference  from  the  lay 
world  without  them,  they  carried  on  a  ceaseless  interfer- 
ence with  the  affairs  of  this  lay  world  through  their  con- 
trol over  wills,  contracts  and  divorces.  No  figure  was 
better  known  or  more  hated  than  the  summoner  who  en- 
forced the  jurisdiction  and  levied  the  dues  of  their  courts. 
By  their  directly  religious  offices  they  penetrated  into 
the  very  heart  of  the  social  life  about  them.  But  power- 
ful as  they  were,  their  moral  authority  was  fast  passing 
away.  The  wealthier  churchmen  with  their  curled  hair 
and  hanging  sleeves  aped  the  costume  of  the  knightly 
society  from  which  they  were  drawn  and  to  which  they 
still  really  belonged.  We  see  the  general  impression  of 
their  worldliness  in  Chaucer's  pictures  of  the  hunting 
monk  and  the  courtly  prioress  with  her  love-motto  on 
her  brooch.  The  older  religious  orders  in  fact  had  sunk 
into  mere  landowners,  while  the  enthusiasm  of  the  friars 
had  in  great  part  died  away  and  left  a  crowd  of  impudent 
mendicants  behind  it.  Wyclif  could  soon  with  general 
applause  denounce  them  as  sturdy  beggars,  and  declare 
that  "  the  man  who  gives  alms  to  a  begging  friar  is  ipso 
facto  excommunicate." 

It  was  this  weakness  of  the  Baronage  and  the  Church, 
and  the  consequent  withdrawal  of  both  as  represented 
in  the  temporal  and  spiritual  Estates  of  the  Upper  House 
from  the  active  part  which  they  had  taken  till  now  in 
checking  the  Crown,  that  brought  the  Lower  House  to 
the  front.  The  Knight  of  the  Shire  was  now  finally 
joined  with  the  Burgess  of  the  Town  to  form  the  Third 
Estate  of  the  realm :  and  this  union  of  the  trader  and 
the  country  gentleman  gave  a  vigor  and  weight  to  the 
action  of  the  Commons  which  their  House  could  never 
have  acquired  had  it  remained  as  elsewhere  a  mere 
gathering  of  burgesses.  But  it  was  only  slowly  and  un- 
der the  pressure  of  one  necessity  after  another  that  the 
Commons  took  a  growing  part  in  public  affairs.  Their 

28 


484  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

primary  business  was  with  taxation,  and  here  they  stood 
firm  against  the  evasions  by  which  the  King  still  managed 
to  baffle  their  exclusive  right  of  granting  supplies  by  vol- 
untary agreements  with  the  merchants  of  the  Staple. 
Their  steady  pressure  at  last  obtained  in  1862  an  enact- 
ment that  no  subsidy  should  henceforth  be  set  upon  wool 
without  assent  of  Parliament,  while  Purveyance  was  re- 
stricted by  a  provision  that  payments  should  be  made  for 
all  things  taken  for  the  King's  use  in  ready  money.  A 
hardly  less  important  advance  was  made  by  the  change 
of  Ordinances  into  Statutes.  Till  this  time,  even  when 
a  petition  of  the  Houses  was  granted,  the  royal  Council 
had  reserved  to  itself  the  right  of  modifying  its  form  in 
the  Ordinance  which  professed  to  embody  it.  It  was 
under  color  of  this  right  that  so  many  of  the  provisions 
made  in  Parliament  had  hitherto  been  evaded  or  set  aside. 
But  the  Commons  now  met  this  abuse  by  a  demand  that 
on  the  royal  assent  being  given  their  petitions  should  be 
turned  without  change  into  Statutes  of  the  Realm  and 
derive  force  of  law  from  their  entry  on  the  Rolls  of  Par- 
liament. The  same  practical  sense  was  seen  in  their  deal- 
ings with  Edward's  attempt  to  introduce  occasional 
smaller  councils  with  parliamentary  powers.  Such  an 
assembly  in  1353  granted  a  subsidy  on  wool.  The  Par- 
liament which  met  in  the  following  year  might  have 
challenged  its  proceedings  as  null  and  void,  but  the 
Commons  more  wisely  contented  themselves  with  a  de- 
mand that  the  ordinances  passed  in  the  preceding  as- 
sembly should  receive  the  sanction  of  the  Three  Estates. 
A  precedent  for  evil  was  thus  turned  into  a  precedent  for 
good,  and  though  irregular  gatherings  of  a  like  sort  were 
for  a  while  occasionally  held  they  were  soon  seen  to  be 
fruitless  and  discontinued.  But  the  Commons  long 
shrank  from  meddling  with  purely  administrative  matters. 
When  Edward  in  his  anxiety  to  shift  from  himself  the 
responsibility  of  the  war  referred  to  them  in  1354  for 
advice  on  one  of  the  numerous  propositions  of  peace,  they 
referred  him  to  the  lords  of  his  Council.  "  Most  dreaded 
lord,"  they  replied,  "  as  to  this  war  and  the  equipment 
needful  for  it  we  are  so  ignorant  and  simple  that  we 


THE   PABLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461.    !  485 

know  not  how  nor  have  the  power  to  devise.  Wherefore 
we  pray  your  Grace  to  excuse  us  in  this  matter,  and  that 
it  please  you  with  the  advice  of  the  great  and  wise  per- 
sons of  your  Council  to  ordain  what  seems  best  for  you 
for  the  honor  and  profit  of  yourself  and  of  your  kingdom. 
And  whatsoever  shall  be  thus  ordained  by  assent  and 
agreement  on  the  part  of  you  and  your  Lords  we  readily 
assent  to  and  will  hold  it  firmly  established." 

But  humble  as  was  their  tone  the  growing  power  of 
the  Commons  showed  itself  in  significant  changes.  In 
1363  the  Chancellor  opened  Parliament  with  a  speech  in 
English,  no  doubt  as  a  tongue  intelligible  to  the  members 
of  the  Lower  House.  From  a  petition  in  1376  that 
knights  of  the  shire  may  be  chosen  by  common  election  of 
the  better  folk  of  the  shire  and  not  merely  nominated  by 
the  sheriff  without  due  election,  as  well  as  from  an  earlier 
demand  that  the  sheriffs  themselves  should  be  disqualified 
from  serving  in  Parliament  during  their  term  of  office,  we 
see  that  the  Crown  had  already  begun  not  only  to  feel  the 
pressure  of  the  Commons  but  to  meet  it  by  foisting  royal 
nominees  on  the  constituencies.  Such  an  attempt  at 
packing  the  House  would  hardly  have  been  resorted  to 
had  it  not  already  proved  too  strong  for  direct  control.  A 
further  proof  of  its  influence  was  seen  in  a  prayer  of  the 
Parliament  that  lawyers  practising  in  the  King's  courts 
might  no  longer  be  eligible  as  knights  of  the  shire.  The 
petition  marks  the  rise  of  a  consciousness  that  the  House 
was  now  no  mere  gathering  of  local  representatives  but  a 
national  assembly,  and  that  a  seat  in  it  could  no  longer 
be  confined  to  dwellers  within  the  bounds  of  this  county 
or  that.  But  it  showed  also  a  pressure  for  seats,  a 
passing  away  of  the  old  dread  of  being  returned  as  a 
representative  and  a  new  ambition  to  gain  a  place  among 
the  members  of  the  Commons.  Whether  they  would  or 
no  indeed  the  Commons  were  driven  forward  to  a  more 
direct  interference  with  public  affairs.  From  the  memo- 
rable statute  of  1322  their  right  to  take  equal  part  in  all 
matters  brought  before  Parliament  had  been  incontestable, 
and  their  waiver  of  much  of  this  right  faded  away  before 
the  stress  of  time.  Their  assent  was  needed  to  the  great 


486  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PBOf»LE. 

ecclesiastical  statutes  which  regulated  the  relation  of  the 
see  of  Rome  to  the  realm.  They  naturally  took  a  chief 
part  in  the  enactment  and  re-enactment  of  the  Statute  of 
Laborers.  The  Statute  of  the  Staple,  with  a  host  of 
smaller  commercial  and  economical  measures,  were  of 
their  origination.  But  it  was  not  till  an  open  breach 
took  place  between  the  baronage  and  the  prelates  that 
their  full  weight  was  felt.  In  the  Parliament  of  1371, 
on  the  resumption  of  the  war,  a  noble  taunted  the 
Church  as  an  owl  protected  by  the  feathers  which  other 
birds  had  contributed,  and  which  they  had  a  right  to 
resume  when  a  hawk's  approach  threatened  them.  The 
worldly  goods  of  the  Church,  the  metaphor  hinted,  had 
been  bestowed  on  it  for  the  common  weal,  and  could  be 
taken  from  it  on  the  coming  of  common  danger.  The 
threat  was  followed  by  a  prayer  that  the  chief  offices  of 
state,  which  had  till  now  been  held  by  the  leading  bishops, 
might  be  placed  in  lay  hands.  The  prayer  was  at  once 
granted :  William  of  Wykeham,  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
resigned  the  Chancellorship,  another  prelate  the  Treasury, 
to  lay  dependents  of  the  great  nobles ;  and  the  panic  of 
the  clergy  was  seen  in  large  grants  which  were  voted  by 
both  Convocations. 

At  the  moment  of  their  triumph  the  assailants  of  the 
Church  found  a  leader  in  John  of  Gaunt,  The  Duke  of 
Lancaster  now  wielded  the  actual  power  of  the  Crown, 
Edward  himself  was  sinking  into  dotage.  Of  his  sons  the 
Black  Prince,  who  had  never  rallied  from  the  hardships 
of  his  Spanish  campaign,  was  fast  drawing  to  the  grave  ; 
he  had  lost  a  second  son  by  death  in  childhood ;  the 
third,  Lionel  of  Clarence,  had  died  in  1368.  It  was 
his  fourth  son,  therefore,  John  of  Gaunt,  to  whom  the 
royal  power  mainly  fell.  By  his  marriage  with  the  heiress 
of  the  house  of  Lancaster  the  Duke  had  acquired  lands 
and  wealth,  but  he  had  no  taste  for  the  policy  of  the 
Lancastrian  house  or  for  acting  as  leader  of  the  barons 
in  any  constitutional  resistance  to  the  Crown.  His  pride, 
already  quickened  by  the  second  match  with  Constance  to 
which  he  owed  his  shadowy  kingship  of  Castille,  drew  him 
to  the  throne  ;  and  the  fortune  which  placed  the  royal 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  487 

power  practically  in  his  hands  bound  him  only  the  more 
firmly  to  its  cause.     Men  held  that  his  ambition  looked  to 
the  Crown  itself,  for  the  approaching  death  of  Edward  and 
the  Prince  of  Wales  left  but  a  boy,  Richard,  the  son  of  the 
Black  Prince,  a  child  of  but  a  few  years  old,  and  a  girl, 
the  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  between  John  and 
the  throne.     But  the  Duke's  success  fell  short  of  his  pride. 
In  the  campaign  of  1373  he  traversed  France  without 
finding  a  foe,  and  brought  back  nothing  save  a  ruined 
army  to  English  shores.     The  peremptory  tone  in  which 
money  was  demanded  for  the  cost  of  this  fruitless  march, 
while  the  petitions  of  the  Parliament  were  set  aside  till  it 
was  granted,  roused  the  temper  of  the  Commons.     They 
requested — it  is  the  first  instance  of  such  a  practice — a 
conference   with   the    lords,   and   while   granting   fresh 
subsidies  prayed  that  the  grant  should  be  spent  only  on 
the   war.     The   resentment  of  the  government  at   this 
advance  towards  a  control  over  the  actual  management 
of  public  affairs  was  seen  in  the  calling  of  no  Parliament 
through  the   next  two  years.     But  the  years  were  dis- 
astrous both  at  home  and  abroad.     The  war  went  steadily 
against  the  English  arms.     The  long  negotiations  with  the 
Pope  which  went  on  at  Bruges  through  1375,  and  in  which 
Wyclif  took  part  as  one  of  the  royal  commissioners,  ended 
in  a  compromise  by  which  Rome  yielded  nothing.     The 
strife   over  the  Statute   of  Laborers   grew   fiercer   and 
fiercer,  and  a  return  of  the  plague  heightened  the  public 
distress.     Edward    was    now   wholly   swayed   by   Alice 
Perrers,  and  the  Duke  shared  his  power  with  the  royal 
mistress.     But  if  we  gather  its  tenor  from  the  complaints 
of  the  succeeding  Parliament  his  administration  was  as 
weak  as  it  was  corrupt.     The  new  lay  ministers  lent  them- 
selves to  gigantic  frauds.    The  chamberlain,  Lord  Latimer, 
bought   up  the  royal   debts  and   embezzled  the   public 
reven  ue.    With  Richard  Lyons,  a  merchant  through  whom 
the  King  negotiated  with  the  gild  of  the  Staple,  he  reaped 
enormous  profits  by  raising  the  price  of  imports  and  by 
lending  to  the  Crown  at  usurious  rates  of  interest.     When 
the  empty  treasury  forced  them  to  call  a  Parliament  the  min- 
isters tampered  with  the  elections  through  the  sheriffs. 


438  HISTORY   OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

But  the  temper  of  the  Parliament  which  met  in  1376, 
and  which  gained  from  after  times  the  name  of  the  Good 
Parliament,  shows  that  these  precautions  had  utterly 
failed.  Even  their  promise  to  pillage  the  Church  had 
failed  to  win  for  the  Duke  and  his  party  the  good  will 
of  the  lesser  gentry  or  the  wealthier  burgesses  who  to- 
gether formed  the  Commons.  Projects  of  wide  constitu- 
tional and  social  change,  of  the  humiliation  and  impover- 
ishment of  an  estate  of  the  realm,  were  profoundly 
distasteful  to  men  already  struggling  with  a  social  revo- 
lution on  their  own  estates  and  in  their  own  workshops. 
But  it  was  not  merely  its  opposition  to  the  projects  of 
Lancaster  and  his  party  among  the  baronage  which  won 
for  this  assembly  the  name  of  thB  Good  Parliament.  Its 
action  marked  a  new  period  in  our  parliamentary  history, 
as  it  marked  a  new  stage  in  the  character  of  the  national 
opposition  in  the  misrule  of  the  Crown.  Hitherto  the 
task  of  resistance  had  devolved  on  the  baronage,  and  had 
been  carried  out  through  risings  of  its  feudal  tenantry. 
But  the  misgovernment  was  now  that  of  the  baronage  or 
of  a  main  part  of  the  baronage  itself  in  actual  conjunc- 
tion with  the  Crown.  Only  in  the  power  of  the  Com- 
mons lay  any  adequate  means  of  peaceful  redress.  The 
old  reluctance  of  the  Lower  House  to  meddle  with 
matters  of  State  was  roughly  swept  awa}r  therefore  by 
the  pressure  of  the  time.  The  Black  Prince,  anxious  to 
secure  his  child's  succession  by  the  removal  of  John  of 
Gaunt,  the  prelates  with  William  of  Wykeham  at  their 
head,  resolute  again  to  take  their  place  in  the  royal 
councils  and  to  check  the  projects  of  ecclesiastical  spolia- 
tion put  forward  by  their  opponents,  alike  found  in  it  a 
body  to  oppose  to  the  Duke's  administration.  Backed  by 
powers  such  as  these,  the  action  of  the  Commons  showed 
none  of  their  old  timidity  or  self-distrust.  The  presenta- 
tion of  a  hundred  and  sixty  petitions  of  grievances  pre- 
luded a  bold  attack  on  the  royal  Council.  "  Trusting  in 
God,  and  standing  with  its  followers  before  the  nobles, 
whereof  the  chief  was  John  Duke  of  Lancaster,  whose 
doings  were  ever  contrary,"  their  speaker,  Sir  Peter  de 
la  Mare,  denounced  the  mismanagement  of  the  war,  the 


THE   PAELIAMBNT.      1307 — 1461.  489 

oppressive  taxation,  and  demanded  an  account  of  the 
expenditure.  "  What  do  these  base  and  ignoble  knights 
attempt  ?  "  cried  John  of  Gaunt.  "  Do  they  think  they 
be  kings  or  princes  of  the  land  !  "  But  the  movement 
was  too  strong  to  be  stayed.  Even  the  Duke  was  silenced 
by  the  charges  brought  against  the  ministers.  After  a 
strict  inquiry  Latimer  and  Lyons  were  alike  thrown  into 
prison,  Alice  Ferrers  was  banished,  and  several  of  the 
royal  servants  were  driven  from  the  Court.  At  this  mo- 
ment the  death  of  the  Black  Prince  shook  the  power  of 
the  Parliament.  But  it  only  heightened  its  resolve  to 
secure  the  succession.  His  son,  Richard  of  Bordeaux, 
as  he  was  called  from  the  place  of  his  birth,  was  now  a 
child  of  but  ten  years  old  ;  and  it  was  known  that  doubts 
were  whispered  on  the  legitimacy  of  his  birth  and  claim. 
An  early  marriage  of  his  mother,  Joan  of  Kent,  a  grand- 
daughter of  Edward  the  First,  with  the  Earl  of  Salisbury, 
had  been  ann tilled  ;  but  the  Lancastrian  party  used  this 
first  match  to  throw  doubts  on  the  validity  of  her  sub- 
sequent union  with  the  Black  Prince  and  on  the  right  of 
Richard  to  the  throne.  The  dread  of  Lancaster's  ambi- 
tion is  the  first  indication  of  the  approach  of  what  was 
from  this  time  to  grow  into  the  great  difficulty  of  the 
realm,  the  question  of  the  succession  to  the  Crown. 
From  the  death  of  Edward  the  Third  to  the  death  of 
Charles  the  First  no  English  sovereign  felt  himself  secure 
from  rival  claimants  of  his  throne.  As  yet,  however,  the 
dread  was  a  baseless  one  ;  the  people  were  heartily  with 
the  Prince  and  his  child.  The  Duke's  proposal  that  the 
succession  shonld  be  settled  in  case  of  Richard's  death 
was  rejected ;  and  the  boy  himself  was  brought  into 
Parliament  and  acknowledged  as  heir  of  the  Crown. 

To  secure  their  work  the  Commons  ended  by  obtaining 
the  addition  of  nine  lords  with  William  of  Wykeham  and 
two  other  prelates  among  them  to  the  royal  Council. 
But  the  Parliament  was  no  sooner  dismissed  than  the 
Duke  at  once  resumed  his  power.  His  anger  at  the  blow 
which  had  been  dealt  at  his  projects  was  no  doubt  quick- 
ened by  resentment  at  the  sudden  advance  of  the  Lower 
House.  From  the  Commons  who  shrank  even  from  giving 


440  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

counsel  on  matters  of  state  to  the  Commons  who  dealt 
with  such  matters  as  their  special  business,  who  investi- 
gated royal  accounts,  who  impeached  royal  ministers,  who 
dictated  changes  in  the  ro}-al  advisers,  was  an  immense 
step.  But  it  was  a  step  which  the  Duke  believed  could 
be  retraced.  His  haughty  will  flung  aside  all  restraints 
of  law.  He  dismissed  the  new  lords  and  prelates  from 
the  Council.  He  called  back  Alice  Ferrers  and  the 
disgraced  ministers.  He  declared  the  Good  Parliament 
no  parliament,  and  did  not  suffer  its  petitions  to  be  en- 
rolled as  statutes.  He  imprisoned  Peter  de  la  Mare,  and 
confiscated  the  possessions  of  William  of  VVrykeham.  His 
attack  on  this  prelate  was  an  attack  on  the  clergy  at  large, 
and  the  attack  became  significant  when  the  Duke  gave 
his  open  patronage  to  the  denunciations  of  Church  prop- 
erty which  formed  the  favorite  theme  of  John  Wyclif. 
To  Wyclif  such  a  prelate  as  Wykeham  symbolized  the 
evil  which  held  down  the  Church.  Hi*  administrative 
ability,  his  political  energy,  his  wealth  and  the  colleges  at 
Winchester  and  at  Oxford  which  it  enabled  him  to  raise 
before  his  death,  were  all  equally  hateful.  It  was  this 
wealth,  this  intermeddling  with  worldly  business,  which 
the  ascetic  reformer  looked  upon  .as  the  curse  that  robbed 
prelates  and  churchmen  of  that  spiritual  authority  which 
could  alone  meet  the  vice  and  suffering  of  the  time. 
Whatever  baser  motives  might  spur  Lancaster  and  his 
party,  their  projects  of  spoliation  must  have  seemed  to 
Wyclif  projects  of  enfranchisement  for  the  Church.  Poor 
and  powerless  in  worldly  matters,  he  held  that  she  would 
have  the  wealth  and  might  of  heaven  at  her  command. 
Wyclif  s  theory  of  Church  and  State  had  led  him  long 
since  to  contend  that  the  property  of  the  clergy  might  be 
seized  and  employed  like  other  property  for  national 
purposes.  Such  a  theory  might  have  been  left,  as  other 
daring  theories  of  the  schoolmen  had  been  left,  to  the 
disputation  of  the  schools.  But  the  clergy  were  bitterly 
galled  when  the  first  among  English  teachers  threw  him- 
self hotly  on  the  side  of  the  party  which  threatened  them 
with  spoliation,  and  argued  in  favor  of  their  voluntary 
abandonment  of  all  Church  property  and  of  a  return  to 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  411 

their  original  poverty.  They  were  roused  to  action  when 
Wyclif  came  forward  as  the  theological  bulwark  of  the 
Lancastrian  party  at  a  moment  when  the  clergy  were 
freshly  outraged  by  the  overthrow  of  the  bishops  and  the 
plunder  of  Wykeham.  They  forced  the  King  to  cancel 
the  sentence  of  banishment  from  the  precincts  of  the 
Court  which  had  been  directed  against  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester  by  refusing  any  grant  of  supply  in  Convoca- 
tion till  William  of  Wykeham  took  his  seat  in  it.  But 
in  the  prosecution  of  Wyclif  they  resolved  to  return  blow 
for  blow.  In  February,  1377,  he  was  summoned  before 
Bishop  Courtenay  of  London  to  answer  for  his  heretical 
propositions  concerning  the  wealth  of  the  Church. 

The  Duke  of  Lancester  accepte  the  challenge  as 
really  given  to  himself,  and  stood  by  Wyclif's  side  in  the 
Consistory  Court  at  St.  Paul's.  But  no  trial  took  place. 
Fierce  words  passed  between  the  nobles  and  the  prelate  : 
the  Duke  himself  was  said  to  have  threatened  to  drag 
Courtenay  out  of  the  church  by  the  hair  of  his  head  ;  at 
last  the  London  populace,  to  whom  John  of  Gaunt  was 
hateful,  burst  in  to  their  Bishop's  rescue,  and  Wyclif  s 
life  was  saved  with  difficulty  by  the  aid  of  the  soldiery. 
But  his  boldness  only  grew  with  the  danger.  A  Papal 
bull  which  was  procured  by  the  bishops,  directing  the 
University  to  condemn  and  arrest  him,  extorted  from  him 
a  bold  defiance.  In  a  defence  circulated  widely  through 
the  kingdom  and  laid  before  Parliament,  Wyclif  broadly 
asserted  that  no  man  could  be  excommunicated  by  the 
Pope  "unless  he  were  first  excommunicated  by  himself." 
He  denied  the  right  of  the  Church  to  exact  or  defend 
temporal  privileges  by  spiritual  censures,  declared  that  a 
Church  might  justly  be  deprived  by  the  King  or  lay  lords 
of  its  property  for  defect  of  duty,  and  defended  the  sub- 
jection of  ecclesiastics  to  civil  tribunals.  It  marks  the 
temper  of  the  time  and  the  growing  severance  between 
the  Church  and  the  nation  that,  bold  as  the  defiance  was, 
it  won  the  support  of  the  people  as  of  the  Crown.  When 
Wyclif  appeared  at  the  close  of  the  year  in  Lambeth 
Chapel  to  answer  the  Archbishop's  summons  a  message 
from  the  Court  forbade  the  primate  to  proceed  and  the 
Londoners  broke  in  and  dissolved  the  session. 


442  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Meanwhile  the  Duke's  unscrupulous  tampering  with 
elections  had  packed  the  Parliament  of  1377  with  his 
adherents.  The  work  of  the  Good  Parliament  was  undone, 
and  the  Commons  petitioned  for  the  restoration  of  all  who 
had  been  impeached  by  their  predecessors.  The  needs 
of  the  treasury  were  met  by  a  novel  form  of  taxation. 
To  the  earlier  land-tax,  to  the  tax  on  personalty  which 
dated  from  the  Saladin  Tithe,  to  the  customs  duties  which 
had  grown  into  importance  in  the  last  two  reigns,  was  now 
added  a  tax  which  reached  every  person  in  the  realm,  a  poll- 
tax  of  a  groat  a  head.  In  this  tax  were  sown  the  seeds  of 
future  trouble,  but  when  the  Parliament  broke  up  in 
March  the  Duke's  power  seemed  completely  secured. 
Hardly  three  months  later  it  was  wholly  undone.  In 
June  Edward  the  Third  died  in  a  dishonored  old  age, 
robbed  on  his  deathbed  even  of  his  rings  by  the  mistress 
to  whom  he  clung,  and  the  accession  of  his  grandson, 
Richard  the  Second,  changed  the  whole  face  of  affairs. 
The  Duke  withdrew  from  court,  and  sought  a  reconcilia- 
tion with  the  party  opposed  to  him.  The  men  of  the  Good 
Parliament  surrounded  the  new  King,  and  a  Parliament 
which  assembled  in  October  took  vigorously  up  its  work. 
Peter  de  la  Mare  was  released  from  prison  and  replaced 
in  the  chair  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  action  of 
the  Lower  House  indeed  was  as  trenchant  and  com- 
prehensive as  that  of  the  Good  Parliament  itself.  In 
petition  after  petition  the  Commons  demanded  the  con- 
firmation of  older  rights  and  the  removal  of  modern  abuses. 
They  complained  of  administrative  wrongs  such  as  the 
practice  of  purveyance,  of  abuses  of  justice,  of  the  oppres- 
sions of  officers  of  the  exchequer  and  of  the  forest,  of  the  ill 
state  of  the  prisons,  of  the  custom  of  "  maintenance  "  by 
which  lords  extended  their  livery  to  shoals  of  disorder!}' 
persons  and  overawed  the  courts  by  means  of  them.  Amid 
ecclesiastical  abuses  they  noted  the  state  of  the  Church 
courts,  and  the  neglect  of  the  laws  of  Provisors.  They  de- 
manded that  the  annual  assembly  of  Parliament,  which  had 
now  become  customary,  should  be  defined  by  law,  and  that 
bilk  once  sanctioned  by  the  Crown  should  be  forthwith 
turned  into  statutes  without  further  amendment  or  change 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1807 — 1461.  448 

on  the  part  of  the  royal  Council.  With  even  greater 
boldness  they  laid  hands  on  the  administration  itself. 
They  not  only  demanded  that  the  evil  counsellors  of  the 
last  reign  should  be  removed,  and  that  the  treasurer  of 
the  subsidjr  On  wool  should  account  for  its  expenditure 
to  the  lords,  but  that  the  royal  Council  should  be  named 
in  Parliament,  and  chosen  from  members  of  either  estate 
of  the  realm.  Though  a  similar  request  for  the  nomina- 
tion of  the  officers  of  the  royal  household  was  refused, 
their  main  demand  was  granted.  It  was  agreed  that  the 
great  officers  of  state,  the  chancellor,  treasurer,  and  bar- 
ons of  exchequer  should  be  named  by  the  lords  in  Parlia- 
ment, and  removed  from  their  offices  during  the  king's 
"  tender  years  "  only  on  the  advice  of  the  lords.  The 
pressure  of  the  war,  which  rendered  the  existing  taxes 
insufficient,  gave  the  House  a  fresh  hold  on  the  Crown. 
While  granting  a  new  subsidy  in  the  form  of  a  land  and 
property  tax,  the  Commons  restricted  its  proceeds  to  the 
war,  and  assigned  two  of  their  members,  William  Wai- 
worth  and  John  Philpot,  as  a  standing  committee  to  reg- 
ulate its  expenditure.  The  successor  of  this  Parliament 
in  the  following  year  demanded  and  obtained  an  account 
of  the  way  in  which  the  subsidy  had  been  spent. 

The  minority  of  the  King,  who  was  but  eleven  years 
old  at  his  accession,  the  weakness  of  the  royal  council 
amidst  the  strife  of  the  baronial  factions,  above  all  the 
disasters  of  the  war  without  and  the  growing  anarchy 
within  the  realm  itself,  alone  made  possible  this  start- 
ling assumption  of  the  executive  power  by  the  Houses. 
The  shame  of  defeat  abroad  was  being  added  to  the 
misery  and  discomfort  at  home.  The  French  war  ran  its 
disastrous  course.  One  English  fleet  was  beaten  by  the 
Spaniards,  a  second  sunk  by  a  storm  ;  and  a  campaign  in 
the  heart  of  France  ended,  like  its  predecessors,  in  disap- 
pointment and  ruin.  Meanwhile  the  strife  between  em- 
ployers and  employed  was  kindling  into  civil  war.  The 
Parliament,  drawn  as  it  was  wholly  from  the  proprietary 
classes,  struggled  as  fiercely  for  the  mastery  of  the  laborers 
as  it  struggled  for  the  mastery  of  the  Crown.  The  Good 
Parliament  had  been  as  strenuous  in  demanding  the  en- 


444  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

forcement  of  the  Statute  of  Laborers  as  any  of  its  predeces- 
sors. In  spite  of  statutes,  however,  the  market  remained 
in  the  laborers'  hands.  The  comfort  of  the  worker  rose 
with  his  wages.  Men  who  had  "  no  land  to  live  on  but 
their  hands  disdained  to  live  on  penny  ale  or  bacon,  and 
called  for  fresh  flesh  or  fish,  fried  or  bake,  and  that  hot  and 
hotter  for  chilling  for  their  maw."  But  there  were  dark 
shades  in  this  general  prosperity  of  the  labor  class. 
There  were  seasons  of  the  year  during  which  employment 
for  the  floating  mass  of  labor  was  hard  to  find.  In  the 
long  interval  between  harvest-tide  and  harvest-tide  work 
and  food  were  alike  scarce  in  every  homestead  of  the 
time.  Some  lines  of  William  Longland  give  us  the  pic- 
ture of  a  farm  of  the  day.  "  I  have  no  penny  pullets  for 
to  buy,  nor  neither  geese  nor  pigs,  but  two  green  cheeses, 
a  few  curds  and  cream,  and  an  oaten  cake,  and  two 
loaves  of  beans  and  bran  baken  for  my  children.  I  have 
no  salt  bacon  nor  no  cooked  meat  collops  for  to  make, 
but  I  have  parsley  and  leeks  and  many  cabbage  plants, 
and  eke  a  cow  and  a  calf,  and  a  cart-mare  to  draw  a-field 
my  dung  while  the  drought  lasteth,  and  by  this  livelihood 
we  must  all  live  till  Lammas-tide  [August],  and  by  that 
I  hope  to  have  harvest  in  my  croft."  But  it  was  not  till 
Lammas-tide  that  high  wages  and  the  new  corn  bade 
"Hunger  go  to  sleep,"  and  during  the  long  spring  and 
summer  the  free  laborer  and  the  "  waster  that  will  not 
work  but  wander  about,  that  will  eat  no  bread  but  the 
finest  wheat,  nor  drink  but  of  the  best  and  brownest  ale," 
was  a  source  of  social  and  political  danger.  "  Hegrieveth 
him  against  God  and  grudgeth  against  Reason,  and  then 
curseth  he  the  King  and  all  his  council  after  such  law  to 
allow  laborers  to  grieve."  Such  a  smouldering  mass  of 
discontent  as  this  needed  but  a  spark  to  burst  into  flame  ; 
and  the  spark  was  found  in  the  imposition  of  fresh  taxa- 
tion. 

If  John  of  Gaunt  was  fallen  from  his  old  power  he 
was  still  the  leading  noble  in  the  realm,  and  it  is  possible 
that  dread  of  the  encroachments  of  the  last  Parliament  on 
the  executive  power  drew  after  a  time  even  the  new  ad- 
visers of  the  Crown  closer  to  him.  Whatever  was  the 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  445 

cause,  he  again  came  to  the  front.  But  the  supplies 
voted  in  the  past  year  were  wasted  in  his  hands.  A  fresh 
expedition  against  France  under  the  Duke  himself  ended 
in  failure  before  the  walls  of  St.  Malo,  while  at  home 
his  brutal  household  was  outraging  public  order  by  the 
murder  of  a  knight  who  had  incurred  John's  anger  in  the 
precincts  of  Westminster.  So  great  was  the  resentment  of 
the  Londoners  at  this  act  that  it  became  needful  to  sum- 
mon Parliament  elsewhere  than  to  the  capital ;  and  in 
1378  the  Houses  met  at  Gloucester.  The  Duke  succeeded 
in  bringing  the  lords  to  refuse  those  conferences  with  the 
Commons  which  had  given  unity  to  the  action  of  the 
late  Parliament,  but  he  was  foiled  in  an  attack  on  the 
clerical  privilege  of  sanctuary  and  in  the  threats  which 
his  party  still  directed  against  Church  property,  while 
the  Commons  forced  the  royal  Council  to  lay  before  them 
the  accounts  of  the  last  subsidy  and  to  appoint  a  commis- 
sion to  examine  into  the  revenue  of  the  Crown.  Un- 
happily the  financial  policy  of  the  preceding  year  was  per- 
sisted in.  The  check  before  St.  Malo  had  been  some- 
what redeemed  by  treaties  with  Charles  of  Evreux  and 
the  Duke  of  Britanny,  which  secured  to  England  the 
right  of  holding  Cherbourg  and  Brest  ;  but  the  cost  of 
these  treaties  only  swelled  the  expenses  of  the  war. 
The  fresh  supplies  voted  at  Gloucester  proved  insufficient 
for  their  purpose,  and  a  Parliament  in  the  spring  of  1379 
renewed  the  Poll-tax  in  a  graduated  form.  But  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  tax  proved  miserably  inadequate,  and  when 
fresh  debts  beset  the  Crown  in  1380  a  return  was  again 
made  to  the  old  system  of  subsidies.  But  these  failed  in 
their  turn  ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  year  the  Parliament 
again  fell  back  on  a  severer  Poll-tax.  One  of  the  at- 
tractions of  the  new  mode  of  taxation  seems  to  have  been 
that  the  clergy,  who  adopted  it  for  themselves,  paid  in 
this  way  a  larger  share  of  the  burdens  of  the  state  ;  but 
the  chief  ground  for  its  adoption  lay,  no  doubt,  in  its 
bringing  within  the  net  of  the  tax-gatherer  a  class  which 
had  hitherto  escaped  him,  men  such  as  the  free  laborer,  the 
village  smith,  the  village  tiler.  But  few  courses  could 
have  been  more  dangerous.  The  poll-tax  not  only 


446  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

brought  the  pressure  of  the  war  home  to  every  house- 
hold ;  it  goaded  into  action  precisely  the  class  which 
was  already  seething  with  discontent.  The  strife  be- 
tween labor  and  capital  was  going  on  as  fiercely  as  ever 
in  country  and  in  town.  The  landlords  were  claiming 
new  services,  or  forcing  men  who  looked  on  themselves 
as  free  to  prove  they  were  no  villeins  by  law.  The  free 
laborer  was  struggling  against  the  attempt  to  exact  work 
from  him  at  low  wages.  The  wandering  workman  was 
being  seized  and  branded  as  a  vagrant.  The  abbey 
towns  were  struggling  for  freedom  against  the  abbeys. 
The  craftsmen  within  boroughs  were  carrying  on  the  same 
strife  against  employer  and  craft-gild.  And  all  this  mass 
of  discontent  was  being  heightened  and  organized  by 
agencies  with  which  the  government  could  not  cope. 
The  poorer  villeins  and  the  free  laborers  had  long  since 
banded  together  in  secret  conspiracies  which  the  wealthier 
villeins  supported  with  money.  The  return  of  soldiers 
from  the  war  threw  over  the  land  a  host  of  broken  men, 
skilled  in  arms,  and  ready  to  take  part  in  any  rising. 
The  begging  friars,  wandering  and  gossiping  from  village 
to  village  and  street  to  street,  shared  the  passions  of  the 
class  from  which  they  sprang.  Priests  like  Ball  openly 
preached  the  doctrines  of  communism.  And  to  these 
nad  been  recently  added  a  fresh  agency  which  could 
hardly  fail  to  stir  a  new  excitement.  With  the  practical 
ability  which  marked  his  character  Wyclif  set  on  foot 
about  this  time  a  body  of  poor  preachers  to  supply,  as  he 
held,  the  place  of  those  wealthier  clergy  who  had  lost 
their  hold  on  the  land.  The  coarse  sermons,  bare  feet, 
and  russet  dress  of  these  "  Simple  Priests  "  moved  the 
laughter  of  rector  and  canon,  but  they  proved  a  rapid 
and  effective  means  of  diffusing  Wyclif  s  protests  against 
the  wealth  and  sluggishness  of  the  clergy,  and  we  can 
hardly  doubt  that  in  the  general  turmoil  their  denuncia- 
tion of  ecclesiastical  wealth  passed  often  into  more 
general  denunciations  of  the  proprietary  classes. 

As  the  spring  went  by  quaint  rimes  passed  through 
the  country,  and  served  as  a  summons  to  revolt.  "  John 
Ball,"  ran  one,  "  greeteth  you  all,  and  doth  for  to  under- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461.  447 

stand  he  hath  rung  your  bell.  Now  right  and  might, 
will  and  skill,  God  speed  every  dele."  "  Help  truth," 
ran  another,  "  and  truth  shall  help  you  !  Now  reigneth 
pride  in  price,  and  covetise  is  counted  wise,  and  lechery 
withouten  shame,  and  gluttony  withouten  blame.  Envy 
reigneth  with  treason,  and  sloth  is  take  in  great  season. 
God  do  bote,  for  now  is  tyme  !  "  We  recognize  Ball's 
hand  in  the  yet  more  stirring  missives  of  "Jack  the 
Miller  "  and  "  Jack  the  Carter."  "  Jack  Miller  asketh  help 
to  turn  his  mill  aright.  He  hath  grounden  small,  small  : 
the  King's  Son  of  Heaven  he  shall  pay  for  all.  Look 
thy  mill  go  aright  with  the  four  sailes,  and  the  post 
stand  with  steadfastness.  With  right  and  with  might, 
with  skill  and  with  will ;  let  might  help  right,  and  skill  go 
before  will,  and  right  before  might,  so  goeth  our  mill 
aright."  "  Jack  Carter,"  ran  the  companion  missive,  "  prays 
you  all  that  ye  make  a  good  end  of  that  ye  have  begun, 
and  do  well,  and  aye  better  and  better :  for  at  the  even 
men  heareth  the  day."  "Falseness  and  guile,"  sang  Jack 
Trewman,  "  have  reigned  too  long,  and  truth  hath  been 
set  under  a  loc1'  and  falseness  and  guile  reigneth  in  every 
stock.  No  man  may  come  truth  to,  but  if  he  sing  "  si 
dedero.'  True  love  is  away  that  was  so  good,  and  clerks 
for  wealth  work  them  woe.  God  do  bote,  for  now  is 
time."  In  the  rude  jingle  of  these  lines  began  for  England 
the  literature  of  political  controversy :  they  are  the  first 
predecessors  of  the  pamphlets  of  Milton  and  of  Burke. 
Rough  as  they  are,  they  express  clearly  enough  the 
mingled  passions  which  met  in  the  revolt  of  the  peasants  : 
their  longing  for  a  right  rule,  for  plain  and  simple  justice  : 
their  scorn  of  the  immorality  of  the  nobles  and  the  infamy 
of  the  court  ,  their  resentment  at  the  perversion  of  the  law 
to  the  cause  of  oppression. 

From  the  eastern  and  midland  counties  the  restlessness 
spread  to  all  England  south  of  the  Thames.  But  the 
grounds  of  discontent  varied  with  every  district.  The 
actual  outbreak  began  on  the  5th  of  June  at  Dartford, 
when  a  tiler  killed  one  of  the  collectors  of  the  poll-tax  in 
vengeance  for  a  brutal  outrage  on  his  daughter.  The 
country  at  once  rose  in  arms.  Canterbury,  where  "the  whole 


448  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

town  was  of  their  mind,"  threw  open  its  gates  to  the 
insurgents  who  plundered  the  Archbishop's  palace  and 
dragged  John  Ball  from  his  prison.  A  hundred  thousand 
Kentishmen  gathered  round  Walter  Tyler  of  Essex  and 
John  Hales  of  Mailing  to  march  upon  London.  Their 
grievance  was  mainly  a  political  one.  Villeinage  was 
unknown  in  Kent.  As  the  peasants  poured  toward  Black- 
heath  indeed  every  lawyer  who  fell  into  their  hands  was 
put  to  death ;  "  not  till  all  these  were  killed  would  the 
land  enjoy  its  old  freedom  again,"  the  Kentishmen  shouted 
as  they  fired  the  houses  of  the  stewards  and  flung  the 
rolls  of  the  manor  courts  into  the  flames.  But  this  action 
can  hardly  have  been  due  to  anything  more  than  sympathy 
with  the  rest  of  the  realm,  the  sympathy  which  induced 
the  same  men,  when  pilgrims  from  the  north  brought  news 
that  John  of  Gaunt  was  setting  free  his  bondmen,  to  send 
to  the  Duke  an  offer  to  make  him  Lord  and  King  of 
England.  Nor  was  their  grievance  a  religious  one. 
Lollardry  can  have  made  little  way  among  men  whose 
grudge  against  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  sprang  from 
his  discouragement  of  pilgrimages.  Their  discontent  was 
simply  political ,  they  demanded  the  suppression  of  the 
poll-tax  and  better  government  ;  their  aim  was  to  slay  the 
nobles  and  wealthier  clergy,  to  take  the  King  into  their 
own  hands,  and  pass  laws  which  should  seem  good  to  the 
Commons  of  the  realm.  The  whole  population  joined 
the  Kentishmen  as  they  marched  along,  while  the  nobles 
were  paralyzed  with  fear.  The  young  King — he  was  but 
a  boy  of  sixteen — addressed  them  from  a  boat  on  the 
river  :  but  the  refusal  of  his  Council  under  the  guidance  of 
Archbishop  Sudbury  to  allow  him  to  land  kindled  the 
peasants  to  fury,  and  with  cries  of  "Treason  "  the  great 
mass  rushed  on  London.  On  the  13th  of  June  its  gates 
were  flung  open  by  the  poorer  artizans  within  the  city, 
and  the  stately  palace  of  John  of  Gaunt  at  the  Savoy, 
the  new  inn  of  the  lawyers  at  the  Temple,  the  houses  of 
the  foreign  merchants,  were  soon  in  ablaze.  But  the  in- 
mirgents,  as  they  proudly  boasted,  were  "  seekers  of  truth 
and  justice,  not  thieves  or  robbers,"  and  a  plunderer  found 
carrying  off  a  silver  vessel  from  the  sack  of  the  Savoy  was 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  449 

flung  with  his  spoil  into  the  flames.     Another  body  of 
insurgents  encamped  at  the  same  time  to  the  east  of  the 
city.      In  Essex  and   the   eastern  counties  the  popular 
discontent  was  more  social  than  political.     The  demands 
of  the  peasants  were  that  bondage  should  be  abolished, 
that  tolls  and  imposts  on  trade  should  be  done   away 
with,  that  "  no  acre  of  land  which  is  held  in  bondage  or 
villeinage  be  held  at  higher  rate  than  fourpence  a  year," 
in  other  words,  for  a  money  commutation  of  all  villein  ser- 
vices.    Their  rising  had  been  even  earlier  than  that  of  the 
Kentishmen.     Before  Whitsuntide  an  attempt  to  levy  the 
poll-tax   gathered   crowds  of  peasants   together,  armed 
with  clubs,  rusty  swords,  and  bows.     The  royal  commis- 
sioners who  were  sent  to  repress  the  tumult  were  driven 
from  the  field,  and  the  Essex  men  marched  upon  London 
on  one  side  of  the  river  as  the  Kentishmen  marched  on  the 
other.     The  evening  of  the  thirteenth,  the  day  on  which 
Tyler  entered  the  city,  saw  them  encamped  without  its 
walls  at  Mile-end.      At  the  same  moment  Highbury  and 
the  northern  heights  were  occupied  by  the  men  of  Hertford- 
shire and  the  villeins  of  St.  Alban's,  where  a  strife  between 
abbot  and  town  had  been  going  on  since  the  days  of 
Edward  the  Second. 

The  royal  Council  with  the  young  King  had  taken 
refuge  in  the  Tower,  and  their  aim  seems  to  have  been  to 
divide  the  forces  of  the  in  surgents.  On  the  morning  of 
the  fourteenth,  therefore,  Richard  rode  from  the  Tower 
to  Mile-end  to  meet  the  Essex  men.  "  I  am  your  King 
and  Lord,  good  people,"  the  boy  began  with  a  fearless- 
ness which  marked  his  bearing  throughout  the  crisis, 
"  what  will  you  ?  "  "  We  will  that  you  free  us  forever," 
shouted  the  peasants,  "  us  and  our  lands ;  and  that  we 
be  never  named  nor  held  for  serfs  !  "  "I  grant  it,"  re- 
plied Richard;  and  he  bade  them  go  home,  pledging 
himself  at  once  to  issue  charters  of  freedom  and  amnesty. 
A  shout  of  joy  welcomed  the  promise.  Throughout  the 
day  more  than  thirty  clerks  were  busied  writing  letters 
of  pardon  and  emancipation,  and  with  these  the  mass  of 
the  Essex  men  and  the  men  of  Hertfordshire  withdrew 
quietly  to  their  homes.  But  while  the  King  was  suc- 

29 


450  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

cessful  at  Mile-end  a  terrible  doom  had  fallen  on  the 
councillors  he  left  behind  him.  Richard  had  hardly 
quitted  the  Tower  when  the  Kentishmen  who  had  spent 
the  night  within  the  city  appeared  at  its  gates.  The  gen- 
eral terror  was  shown  ludicrously  enough  when  they 
burst  in,  and  taking  the  panic-stricken  knights  of  the 
royal  household  in  rough  horse-play  by  the  beard  prom- 
ised to  be  their  equals  and  good  comrades  in  the  days  to 
come.  But  the  horse-play  changed  into  dreadful  earnest 
when  they  found  that  Richard  had  escaped  their  grasp, 
and  the  discovery  of  Archbishop  Sudbury  and  other  min- 
isters in  the  chapel  changed  their  fury  into  a  cry  for 
blood.  The  Primate  was  dragged  from  his  sanctuary 
and  beheaded.  The  same  vengeance  was  wreaked  on 
the  Treasurer  and  the  Chief  Commissioner  for  the  levy 
of  the  hated  poll-tax,  the  merchant  Richard  Lyons  who 
had  been  impeached  by  the  Good  Parliament.  Richard 
meanwhile  had  ridden  round  the  northern  wall  of  the 
city  to  the  Wardrobe  near  Blackfriars,  and  from  this  new 
refuge  he  opened  his  negotiations  with  the  Kentish  in- 
surgents. Many  of  these  dispersed  at  the  news  of  the 
King's  pledge  to  the  men  of  Essex,  but  a  body  of  thirty 
thousand  still  surrounded  Wat  Tyler  when  Richard,  on 
the  morning  of  the  fifteenth,  encountered  that  leader  by 
a  mere  chance  at  Smithfield.  Hot  words  passed  between 
his  train  and  the  peasant  chieftain  who  advanced  to  con- 
fer with  the  King,  and  a  threat  from  Tyler  brought  on  a 
brief  struggle,  in  which  the  Mayor  of  London,  William 
Walworth,  struck  him  with  his  dagger  to  the  ground. 
"  Kill !  kill !  "  shouted  the  crowd,  "  they  have  slain  our 
captain  !  "  But  Richard  faced  the  Kentishmen  with  the 
same  cool  courage  with  which  he  faced  the  men  of  Essex. 
"  What  need  ye,  my  masters !  "  cried  the  boy-king  as  he 
rode  boldly  up  to  the  front  of  the  bowmen.  "  I  am  your 
Captain  and  your  King ;  Follow  me  !  "  The  hopes  of  the 
peasants  centred  in  the  young  sovereign ;  one  aim  of  their 
rising  had  been  to  free  him  from  the  evil  counsellors 
who,  as  they  believed,  abused  his  youth ;  and  at  his  word 
they  followed  him  with  a  touching  loyalty  and  trust  till 
he  entered  the  Tower.  His  mother  welcomed  him  within 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  451 

its  walls  with  tears  of  joy.  "  Rejoice  and  praise  God," 
Richard  answered,  "  for  I  have  recovered  to-day  my  her- 
itage which  was  lost  and  the  realm  of  England ! "  But 
he  was  compelled  to  give  the  same  pledge  of  freedom  to 
the  Kentishmen  as  at  Mile-end,  and  it  was  only  after  re- 
ceiving his  letters  of  pardon  and  emancipation  that  the 
yeomen  dispersed  to  their  homes. 

The  revolt  indeed  was  far  from  being  at  an  end.  As 
the  news  of  the  rising  ran  through  the  country  the  discoe- 
tent  almost  everywhere  broke  into  flame.  There  were 
outbreaks  in  every  shire  south  of  the  Thames  as  far  west- 
ward as  Devonshire.  In  the  north  tumults  broke  out  at 
Beverley  and  Scarborough,  and  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire 
made  ready  to  rise.  The  eastern  counties  were  in  one 
wild  turmoil  of  revolt.  At  Cambridge  the  townsmen 
burned  the  charters  of  the  University  and  attacked  the 
colleges.  A  body  of  peasants  occupied  St.  Alban's.  In 
Norfolk  a  Norwich  artisan,  called  John  the  Litster  or 
Dyer,  took  the  title  of  King  of  the  Commons,  and  march- 
ing through  the  country  at  the  head  of  a  mass  of  peasants 
compelled  the  nobles  whom  he  captured  to  act  as  his 
meat-tasters  and  to  serve  him  on  their  knees  during  his 
repast.  The  story  of  St.  Edmundsbury  shows  us  what 
was  going  on  in  Suffolk.  Ever  since  the  accession  of 
Edward  the  Third  the  townsmen  and  the  villeins  of  their 
lands  around  had  been  at  war  with  the  abbot  and  his 
monks.  The  old  and  more  oppressive  servitude  had  long 
passed  away,  but  the  later  abbots  had  set  themselves 
against  he  policy  of  concession  and  concilation  which 
had  brought  about  this  advance  towards  freedom.  The 
gates  of  the  town  were  still  in  the  abbot's  hands.  He 
had  succeeded  in  enforcing  his  claim  to  the  wardship  of 
all  orphans  born  within  his  domain.  From  claims  such  as 
these  the  town  could  never  feel  itself  safe  so  long  as 
mysterious  charters  from  Pope  or  King,  interpreted  cun- 
ningly by  the  wit  of  the  new  lawyer  class,  lay  stored  in 
the  abbey  archives.  But  the  archives  contained  other 
and  hardly  less  formidable  documents  than  these.  Un- 
troubled by  the  waste  of  war,  the  religious  houses 
profited  more  than  any  other  landowners  by  the  general 


452  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

growth  of  wealth.  They  had  become  great  proprietors, 
money  lenders  to  their  tenants,  extortionate  as  the  Jew 
whom  theyjiad  banished  from  their  land.  There  were  few 
townsmen  of  St.  Edmund's  who  had  not  some  bonds  laid 
up  in  the  abbey  registry.  In  1327  one  band  of  debtors 
had  a  covenant  lying  there  for  the  payment  of  five 
hundred  marks  and  fifty  casks  of  wine.  Another  com- 
pany of  the  wealthier  burgesses  were  joint  debtors  on  a 
bond  for  ten  thousand  pounds.  The  new  spirit  of  com- 
mercial activity  joined  with  the  troubles  of  the  time  to 
throw  the  whole  community  into  the  abbot's  hands. 

We  can  hardly  wonder  that  riots,  lawsuits,  and  royal 
commissions  marked  the  relation  of  the  town  and  abbey 
under  the  first  two  Edwards.  Under  the  third  came  an 
open  conflict.  In  1327  the  townsmen  burst  into  the 
great  house,  drove  the  monks  into  the  choir,  and  dragged 
them  thence  to  the  town  prison.  The  abbey  itself  was 
sacked ;  chalices,  missals,  chasubles,  tunicles,  altar  fron- 
tals,  the  books  of  the  library,  the  very  vats  and  dishes  of 
the  kitchen,  all  disappeared.  The  monks  estimated  their 
losses  at  ten  thousand  pounds.  But  the  townsmen  aimed 
at  higher  booty  than  this.  The  monks  were  brought  back 
from  prison  to  their  own  chapter-house,  and  the  spoil  of 
their  registry,  papal  bulls  and  royal  charters,  deeds  and 
bonds  and  mortgages,  were  laid  before  the.  Amidst  the 
wild  threats  of  the  mob  they  were  forced  to  execute  a 
grant  of  perfect  freedom  and  of  a  gild  to  the  town  as  well 
as  of  free  release  to  their  debtors.  Then  they  were  left  mas- 
ters of  the  ruined  house.  But  all  control  over  town  or 
land  was  gone.  Through  spring  and  summer  no  rent  or 
fine  was  paid.  The  bailiffs  and  other  officers  of  the  abbey 
did  not  dare  to  show  their  faces  in  the  streets.  News 
came  at  last  that  the  abbot  was  in  London,  appealing  for 
redress  to  the  court,  and  the  whole  country  was  at  once  on 
fire.  A  crowd  of  rustics,  maddened  at  the  thought  of  re- 
vived claims  of  serfage,  of  interminable  suits  of  law, 
poured  into  the  streets  of  the  town.  From  thirty-two  of 
the  neighboring  villages  the  priests  marched  at  the  head 
of  their  flocks  as  on  a  new  crusade.  The  wild  mass  of 
men,  women,  and  children,  twenty  thousand  in  all,  as  men 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  453 

guessed,  rushed  again  on  the  abbey,  and  for  four  Novem- 
ber days  the  work  of  destruction  went  on  unhindered. 
When  gate,  stables,  granaries,  kitchen,  infirmary,  hostelry 
had  gone  up  in  flames,  the  multitude  swept  away  to  the 
granges  and  barns  of  the  abbey  farms.  Their  plunder 
shows  what  vast  agricultural  proprietors  the  monks  had 
become.  A  thousand  horses,  a  hundred  and  twenty 
plough-oxen,  two  hundred  cows,  three  hundred  bullocks, 
three  hundred  hogs,  ten  thousand  sheep  were  driven  off, 
and  granges  and  barns  burned  to  the  ground.  It  was 
judged  afterwards  that  sixty  thousand  pounds  would 
hardly  cover  the  loss. 

Weak  as  was  the  government  of  Mortimer  and  Isabella, 
the  appeal  of  the  abbot  against  this  outrage  was  promptly 
heeded.  A  royal  force  quelled  the  riot,  thirty  carts  full 
of  prisoners  were  despatched  to  Norwich;  twenty-four 
of  the  chief  townsmen  with  thirty-two  of  the  village 
priests  were  convicted  as  aiders  and  abettors  of  the 
attack  on  the  abbey,  and  twenty  were  summarily  hanged. 
Nearly  two  hundred  persons  remained  under  sentence  of 
outlawry,  and  for  five  weary  years  their  case  dragged 
on  in  the  King's  courts.  At  last  matters  ended  in  a 
ludicrous  outrage.  Irritated  by  repeated  breaches  of 
promise  on  the  abbot's  part,  the  outlawed  burgesses 
seized  him  as  he  lay  in  his  manor  of  Chevington,  robbed 
and  bound  him,  and  carried  him  off  to  London.  There 
he  was  hurried  from  street  to  street  lest  his  hiding-place 
should  be  detected  till  opportunity  offered  for  shipping 
him  off  to  Brabant.  The  Primate  and  the  Pope  levelled 
their  excommunications  against  the  abbot's  captors  in 
vain,  and  though  he  was  at  last  discovered  and  brought 
home  it  was  probably  with  some  pledge  of  the  arrange- 
ment which  followed  in  1332.  The  enormous  damages 
assessed  by  the  royal  justices  were  remitted,  the  out- 
lawry of  the  townsmen  was  reversed,  the  prisoners  were 
released.  On  the  other  hand  the  deeds  which  had  been 
stolen  were  again  replaced  in  the  archives  of  the  abbey, 
and  the  charters  which  had  been  extorted  from  the 
monks  were  formally  cancelled. 

The  spirit  of  townsmen  and  villeins  remained  crushed 


454  HTSTOBY  OP  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

by  their  failure,  and  throughout  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Third  the  oppression  against  which  they  had  risen  went 
on  without  a  check.  It  was  no  longer  the  rough  blow 
of  sheer  force ;  it  was  the  more  delicate  but  more  piti- 
less tyranny  of  the  law.  At  Richard's  accession  Prior 
John  of  Cambridge  in  the  vacancy  of  the  abbot  was  in 
charge  of  the  house.  The  Prior  was  a  man  skilled  in  all 
the  arts  of  his  day.  In  sweetness  of  voice,  in  knowledge 
of  sacred  song,  his  eulogists  pronounced  him  superior  to 
Orpheus,  to  Nero,  and  to  one  yet  more  illustrious  in  the 
Bury  cloister  though  obscure  to  us,  the  Breton  Belga- 
bred.  John  was  "  industrious  and  subtle,"  and  subtlety 
and  industry  found  their  scope  in  suit  after  suit  with 
the  burgesses  and  farmers  around  him.  "  Faithfully  he 
strove,"  says  the  monastic  chronicler  "  with  the  villeins 
of  Bury  for  the  rights  of  his  house."  The  townsmen  he 
owned  specially  as  his  "adversaries,"  but  it  was  the 
rustics  who  were  to  show  what  a  hate  he  had  won.  On 
the  fifteenth  of  June,  the  day  of  Wat  Tyler's  fall,  the 
howl  of  a  great  multitude  round  his  manor  house  at  Mil- 
denhall  broke  roughly  on  the  chauntings  of  Prior  John. 
He  strove  to  fly,  but  he  was  betrayed  by  his  own  ser- 
vants, judged  in  rude  mockery  of  the  law  by  villein  and 
bondsman,  condemned  and  killed.  The  corpse  lay  naked 
in  the  open  field  while  the  mob  poured  unresisted  into 
Bury.  Bearing  the  prior's  head  on  a  lance  before  them 
through  the  streets,  the  frenzied  throng  at  last  reached 
the  gallows  where  the  head  of  one  of  the  royal  judges, 
Sir  John  Cavendish,  was  already  impaled ;  and  pressing 
the  cold  lips  together  in  mockery  of  their  friendship  set 
them  side  by  side.  Another  head  soon  joined  them. 
The  abbey  gates  were  burst  open,  and  the  cloister  filled 
with  a  maddened  crowd,  howling  for  a  new  victim,  John 
Lackenheath,  the  warder  of  the  barony.  Few  knew  him 
as  he  stood  among  the  group  of  trembling  monks,  but  he 
courted  death  with  a  contemptuous  courage.  "  I  am  the 
man  you  seek,"  he  said,  stepping  forward ;  and  in  a 
minute,  with  a  mighty  roar  of  "  Devil's  son  !  Monk  ! 
Traitor ! "  he  was  swept  to  the  gallows,  and  his  head 
hacked  from  his  shoulders.  Then  the  crowd  rolled  back 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  455 

again  to  the  abbey  gate,  and  summoned  the  monks  be- 
fore them.  They  told  them  that  now  for  a  long  time 
they  had  oppressed  their  fellows,  the  burgesses  of  Bury ; 
wherefore  they  willed  that  in  the  sight  of  the  Commons 
they  should  forthwith  surrender  their  bonds  and  char- 
ters. The  monks  brought  the  parchments  to  the  market- 
place ;  many  which  were  demanded  they  swore  they 
could  not  find.  A  compromise  was  at  last  patched  up  ; 
and  it  was  agreed  that  the  charters  should  be  surren- 
dered till  the  future  abbot  should  confirm  the  liberties  of 
the  town.  Then,  unable  to  do  more,  the  crowd  ebbed 
away. 

A  scene  less  violent,  but  even  more  picturesque,  went 
on  the  same  day  at  St.  Alban's.  William  Grindecobbe, 
the  leader  of  its  townsmen,  returned  with  one  of  the 
charters  of  emancipation  which  Richard  had  granted 
after  his  interview  at  Mile-end  to  the  men  of  Essex  and 
Hertfordshire,  and  breaking  into  the  abbey  precincts  at 
the  head  of  the  burghers,  forced  the  abbot  to  deliver  up 
the  charters  which  bound  the  town  in  bondage  to  his 
house.  But  a  more  striking  proof  of  servitude  than  any 
charters  could  give  remained  in  the  mill-stones  which 
after  a  long  suit  at  law  had  been  adjudged  to  the  abbey 
and  placed  within  its  cloister  as  a  triumphant  witness 
that  no  townsman  might  grind  corn  within  the  domain 
of  the  abbey  save  at  the  abbot's  mill.  Bursting  into 
the  cloister,  the  burghers  now  tore  the  mill-stones  from 
the  floor,  and  broke  them  into  small  pieces,  "like  blessed 
bread  in  church,"  which  each  might  carry  off  to  show 
something  of  the  day  when  their  freedom  was  won  again. 
But  it  was  hardly  won  when  it  was  lost  anew.  The 
quiet  withdrawal  and  dispession  of  the  peasant  armies 
with  their  charters  of  emancipation  gave  courage  to  the 
nobles.  Their  panic  passed  away.  The  warlike  Bishop 
of  Norwich  fell  lance  in  hand  on  Litster's  camp,  and 
scattered  the  peasants  of  Norfolk  at  the  first  shock. 
Richard  with  an  army  of  forty  thousand  men  marched 
in  triumph  through  Kent  and  Essex,  and  spread  terror 
by  the  ruthlessness  of  his  executions.  At  Waltham  he 
was  met  by  the  display  of  his  own  recent  charters  and 


456  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

a  protest  from  the  Essex  men  that  "  they  were  so  far  as 
freedom  went  the  peers  of  their  lords."  But  they  were 
to  learn  the  worth  of  a  king's  word.  "  Villeins  you 
were,"  answered  Richard,  "and  villeins  you  are.  In 
bondage  you  shall  abide,  and  that  not  your  old  bondage, 
but  a  worse  !  "  The  stubborn  resistance  which  he  met 
showed  that  the  temper  of  the  people  was  not  easily 
broken.  The  villagers  of  Billericay  threw  themselves 
into  the  woods  and  fought  two  hard  fights  before  they 
were  reduced  to  submission.  It  was  only  by  threats  of 
death  that  verdicts  of  guilty  could  be  wrung  from  Essex 
jurors  when  the  leaders  of  the  revolt  were  brought  be- 
fore them.  Grindecobbe  was  offered  his  life  if  he  would 
persuade  his  followers  at  St.  Alban's  to  restore  the 
charters  they  had  wrung  from  the  monks.  He  turned 
bravely  to  his  fellow-townsmen  and  bade  them  take  no 
thought  for  his  trouble.  "  If  I  die,"  he  said,  "  I  shall 
die  for  the  cause  of  the  freedom  we  have  won,  counting 
myself  happy  to  end  my  life  by  such  a  martyrdom.  Do 
then  to-day  as  you  would  have  done  had  I  been  killed 
yesterday."  But  repression  went  pitilessly  on,  and 
through  the  summer  and  the  autumn  seven  thousand 
men  are  said  to  have  perished  on  the  gallows  or  the 
field. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

RICHARD    THE    SECOND. 

1381—1400. 

TERRIBLE  as  were  the  measures  of  repression  which 
followed  the  Peasant  Revolt,  and  violent  as  was  the 
passion  of  reaction  which  raged  among  the  proprietary 
classes  at  its  close,  the  end  of  the  rising  was  in  fact 
secured.  The  words  of  Grindecobbe  ere  his  death  were 
a  prophecy  which  time  fulfilled.  Cancel  charters  of 
manumission  as  the  council  might,  serfage  was  henceforth 
a  doomed  and  perishing  thing.  The  dread  of  another  out- 
break hung  round  the  employer.  The  attempts  to  bring 
back  obsolete  services  quietly  died  away.  The  old  pro- 
cess of  enfranchisement  went  quietly  on.  During  the 
century  and  a  half  which  followed  the  Peasant  Revolt 
villeinage  died  out  so  rapidly  that  it  became  a  rare  and 
antiquated  thing.  The  class  of  small  freeholders  sprang 
fast  out  of  the  wreck  of  it  into  numbers  and  importance. 
In  twenty  years  more  they  were  in  fact  recognized  as 
the  basis  of  our  electoral  system  in  every  English  county. 
The  Labor  Statutes  proved  as  ineffective  as  of  old  in 
enchaining  labor  or  reducing  its  price.  A  hundred 
years  after  the  Black  Death  the  wages  of  an  English 
laborer  was  sufficient  to  purchase  twice  the  amount  of 
the  necessaries  of  life  which  could  have  been  obtained 
for  the  wages  paid  under  Edward  the  Third.  The  in- 
cidental descriptions  of  the  life  of  the  working  classes 
which  we  find  in  Piers  Ploughman  show  that  this  increase 
of  social  comfort  had  been  going  on  even  during  the 
troubled  period  which  preceded  the  outbreak  of  the 
peasants,  and  it  went  on  faster  after  the  revolt  was  over. 
But  inevitable  as  such  a  progress  was,  every  step  of  it 

(467) 


458  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

was  taken  in  the  teeth  of  the  wealthier  classes.  Their 
temper  indeed  at  the  close  of  the  rising  was  that  of  men 
frenzied  by  panic  and  the  taste  of  blood.  They  scouted 
all  notion  of  concession.  The  stubborn  will  of  the  con- 
quered was  met  by  as  stubborn  a  will  in  their  conquerors. 
The  royal  Council  showed  its  sense  of  the  danger  of  a 
mere  policy  of  resistance  by  submitting  the  question  of 
enfranchisement  to  the  Parliament  which  assembled  in 
November,  1381,  with  words  which  suggested  a  compro- 
mise. "If  you  desire  to  enfranchise  and  set  at  liberty 
the  said  serfs,"  ran  the  royal  message,  "  by  your  common 
assent,  as  the  King  has  been  informed  that  some  of  you 
desire,  he  will  consent  to  your  prayer."  But  no  thoughts 
of  compromise  influenced  the  landowners  in  their  reply. 
The  King's  grant  and  letters,  the  Parliament  answered 
with  perfect  truth,  were  legally  null  and  void :  their 
serfs  were  their  goods,  and  the  King  could  not  take 
their  goods  from  them  but  by  their  own  consent.  "  And 
this  consent,"  they  ended,  "  we  have  never  given  and 
never  will  give,  were  we  all  to  die  in  one  day."  Their 
temper  indeed  expressed  itself  in  legislation  which  was 
a  fit  sequel  to  the  Statutes  of  Laborers.  They  forbade 
the  child  of  any  tiller  of  the  soil  to  be  apprenticed  in  a 
town.  They  prayed  the  King  to  ordain  "  that  no  bond- 
man nor  bondwoman  shall  place  their  children  at  school, 
as  has  been  done,  so  as  to  advance  their  children  in  the 
world  by  their  going  into  the  church."  The  new  colleges 
which  were  being  founded  at  the  Universities  at  this 
moment  closed  their  gates  upon  villeins. 

The  panic  which  produced  this  frenzied  reaction  against 
all  projects  of  social  reform  produced  inevitably  as  frenzied 
a  panic  of  reaction  against  all  plans  for  religious  reform. 
Wyclif  had  been  supported  by  the  Lancastrian  party  till 
the  very  eve  of  the  Peasant  Revolt.  But  with  the  rising 
his  whole  work  seemed  suddenly  undone.  The  quarrel 
between  the  baronage  and  the  Church  on  which  his 
political  action  had  as  yet  been  grounded  was  hushed  in 
the  presence  of  a  common  danger.  His  "  poor  preachers  " 
were  looked  upon  as  missionaries  of  socialism.  The  friars 
charged  Wyclif  with  being  a  "  sower  of  strife,  who  by  his 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  459 

serpentlike  instigation  had  set  the  serf  against  his  lord," 
and  though  he  tossed  back  the  charge  with  disdain  he 
had  to  bear  a  suspicion  which  was  justified  by  the  conduct 
of  some  of  his  followers.  John  Ball,  who  had  figured  in 
the  front  rank  of  the  revolt,  was  falsely  named  as  one  of 
his  adherents,  and  was  alleged  to  have  denounced  in  his 
last  hour  the  conspiracy  of  the  "  Wyclifi tes."  Wyclif  s 
most  prominent  scholar,  Nicholas  Herford,  was  said  to 
have  openly  approved  the  brutal  murder  of  Archbishop 
Sudbury.  Whatever  belief  such  charges  might  gain,  it 
is  certain  that  from  this  moment  all  plans  for  the  reor- 
ganization of  the  Church  were  confounded  in  the  general 
odium  which  attached  to  the  projects  of  the  peasant 
leaders,  and  that  any  hope  of  ecclesiastical  reform  at  the 
hands  of  the  baronage  and  the  Parliament  was  at  an  end. 
But  even  if  the  Peasant  Revolt  had  not  deprived  Wyclif 
of  the  support  of  the  aristocratic  party  with  whom  he  had 
hitherto  co-operated,  their  alliance  must  have  been  dis- 
solved by  the  new  theological  position  which  he  had 
already  taken  up.  Some  months  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  insurrection  he  had  by  one  memorable  step  passed 
from  the  position  of  a  reformer  of  the  discipline  and  po- 
litical relations  of  the  Church  to  that  of  a  protester  against 
its  cardinal  beliefs.  If  there  was  one  doctrine  upon  which 
the  supremacy  of  the  Mediaeval  Church  rested,  it  was 
the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation.  It  was  by  his  exclu- 
sive right  to  the  performance  of  the  miracle  which  was 
wrought  in  the  mass  that  the  lowliest  priest  was  raised 
high  above  princes.  With  the  formal  denial  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Transubstantiation  which  Wyclif  issued  in  the 
spring  of  1381  began  that  great  movement  of  religious 
revolt  which  ended  more  than  a  century  after  in  the  es- 
tablishment of  religious  freedom  by  severing  the  mass  of 
the  Teutonic  peoples  from  the  general  body  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  act  was  the  bolder  that  he  stood  utterly 
alone.  The  University  of  Oxford,  in  which  his  influence 
had  been  hitherto  all-powerful,  at  once  condemned  him. 
John  of  Gaunt  enjoined  him  to  be  silent.  Wyclif  was 
presiding  as  Doctor  of  Divinity  over  some  disputations 
in  the  schools  of  the  Augustinian  Canons  when  his  aca- 


460  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

demical  condemnation  was  publicly  read,  but  though 
startled  for  the  moment  he  at  once  challenged  Chancellor 
or  doctor  to  disprove  the  conclusions  at  which  he  had 
arrived.  The  prohibition  of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  he 
met  by  an  open  avowal  of  his  teaching,  a  confession  which 
closes  proudly  with  the  quiet  words,  "  I  believe  that  in 
the  end  the  truth  will  conquer." 

For  the  moment  his  courage  dispelled  the  panic  around 
him.  The  University  responded  to  his  appeal,  and  by  dis- 
placing his  opponents  from  office  tacitly  adopted  his  cause. 
But  Wyclif  no  longer  looked  for  support  to  the  learned 
or  wealthier  classes  on  whom  he  had  hitherto  relied.  He 
appealed,  and  the  appeal  is  memorable  as  the  first  of  such 
a  kind  in  our  history,  to  England  at  large.  With  an 
amazing  industry  he  issued  tract  after  tract  in  the  tongue 
of  the  people  itself.  The  dry,  syllogistic  Latin,  the  ab- 
struse and  involved  argument  which  the  great  doctor 
had  addressed  to  his  academic  hearers,  were  suddenly 
flung  aside,  and  by  a  transition  which  marks  the  wonder- 
ful genius  of  the  man,  the  schoolman  was  transformed 
into  the  pamphleteer.  If  Chaucer  is  the  father  of  our 
later  English  poetry,  Wyclif  is  the  father  of  our  later 
English  prose.  The  rough,  clear,  homely  English  of  his 
tracts,  the  speech  of  the  ploughman  and  the  trader  of  the 
day  though  colored  with  the  picturesque  phraseology  of 
the  Bible,  is  in  its  literary  use  as  distinctly  a  creation  of 
his  own  as  the  style  in  which  he  embodied  it,  the  terse, 
vehement  sentences,  the  stinging  sarcasms,  the  hard  an- 
titheses which  roused  the  dullest  mind  like  a  whip. 
Once  fairly  freed  from  the  trammels  of  unquestioning 
belief,  Wyclif  s  mind  worked  fast  in  its  career  of  skep- 
ticism. Pardons,  indulgences,  absolutions,  pilgrimages 
to  the  shrines  of  the  saints,  worship  of  their  images,  wor- 
ship of  the  saints  themselves,  were  successively  denied. 
A  formal  appeal  to  the  Bible  as  the  one  ground  of  faith, 
coupled  with  an  assertion  of  the  right  of  every  instructed 
man  to  examine  the  Bible  for  himself,  threatened  the 
very  groimdwork  of  the  older  dogmatism  with  ruin.  Nor 
were  these  daring  denials  confined  to  the  small  circle  of 
scholars  who  still  clung  to  him.  The  "  Simple  Priests  " 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  461 

were  active  in  the  diffusion  of  their  master's  doctrines, 
and  how  rapid  their  progress  must  have  been  we  may  see 
from  the  panic-struck  exaggerations  of  their  opponents. 
A  few  years  later  they  complained  that  the  followers  of 
Wyclif  abounded  everywhere  and  in  all  classes,  among 
the  baronage,  in  the  cities,  among  the  peasantry  of  the 
country-side,  even  in  the  monastic  cell  itself.  "  Every 
second  man  one  meets  is  a  Lollard." 

"  Lollard,"  a  word  which  probably  means  "  idle  bab- 
bler," was  the  nickname  of  scorn  with  which  the  ortho- 
dox Churchmen  chose  to  insult  their  assailants.  But 
this  rapid  increase  changed  their  scorn  into  vigorous  ac- 
tion. In  1382  Courtenay,  who  had  now  become  Arch- 
bishop, summoned  a  council  at  Blackfriars  and  formally 
submitted  twenty-four  propositions  drawn  from  Wyclif  s 
works.  An  earthquake  in  the  midst  of  the  proceedings 
terrified  every  prelate  but  the  resolute  Primate ;  the  ex- 
pulsion of  ill  humors  from  the  earth,  he  said,  was  of  good 
omen  for  the  expulsion  of  ill  humors  from  the  Church  ; 
and  the  condemnation  was  pronounced.  Then  the  Arch- 
bishop turned  fiercely  upon  Oxford  as  the  fount  and 
centre  of  the  new  heresies.  In  an  English  sermon  at  St. 
Frideswide's  Nicholas  Herford  had  asserted  the  truth  of 
Wyclif  s  doctrines,  and  Courtenay  ordered  the  Chancellor 
to  silence  him  and  his  adherents  on  pain  of  being  himself 
treated  as  a  heretic.  The  Chancellor  fell  back  on  the 
liberties  of  the  University,  and  appointed  as  preacher 
another  Wyclifite,  Repyngdon,  who  did  not  hesitate  to 
style  the  Lollards  "  holy  priests,"  and  to  affirm  that  they 
were  protected  by  John  of  Gaunt.  Party  spirit  mean- 
while ran  high  among  the  students.  The  bulk  of  them 
sided  with  the  Lollard  leaders,  and  a  Carmelite,  Peter 
Stokes,  who  had  procured  the  Archbishop's  letters, 
cowered  panic-stricken  in  his  chamber  while  the  Chan- 
cellor, protected  by  an  escort  of  a  hundred  townsmen, 
listened  approvingly  to  Repyngdon's  defiance.  "  I  dare 
go  no  further,"  wrote  the  poor  Friar  to  the  Archbishop, 
"  for  fear  of  death  ; "  but  he  mustered  courage  at  last  to 
descend  into  the  schools  where  Repyngdon  was  now 
maintaining  that  the  clerical  order  was  "  better  when  it 


462  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

was  but  nine  years  old  than  now  that  it  has  grown  to  a 
thousand  years  and  more."  The  appearance,  however,  of 
scholars  in  arms  again  drove  Stokes  to  fly  in  despair  to 
Lambeth,  while  a  new  heretic  in  open  Congregation  main- 
tained Wyclif  s  denial  of  Transubstantiation.  "  There  is 
no  idolatry,"  cried  William  James,  "  save  in  the  Sacra- 
ment of  the  Altar."  "  You  speak  like  a  wise  man,"  re- 
plied the  Chancellor,  Robert  Rygge.  Courtenay,  how- 
erer,  was  not  the  man  to  bear  defiance  tamely,  and  his 
summons  to  Lambeth  wrested  a  submission  from  Rygge 
which  was  only  accepted  on  his  pledge  to  suppress  the 
Lollardism  of  the  University.  "  I  dare  not  publish  them, 
on  fear  of  death,"  exclaimed  the  Chancellor  when  Cour- 
tenay handed  him  his  letters  of  condemnation.  "  Then  is 
your  University  an  openfautor  of  heretics,"  retorted  the 
Primate,  "  if  it  suffers  not  the  Catholic  truth  to  be  pro- 
claimed within  its  bounds."  The  royal  Council  supported 
the  Archbishop's  injunction,  but  the  publication  of  the 
decrees  at  once  set  Oxford  on  fire.  The  scholars  threat- 
ened death  against  the  friars,  "  crying  that  they  wished 
to  destroy  the  University."  The  masters  suspended 
Henry  Crump  from  teaching  as  a  troubler  of  the  public 
peace  for  calling  the  Lollards  "  heretics."  The  Crown, 
however,  at  last  stepped  in  to  Courtenay's  aid,  and  a 
royal  writ  ordered  the  instant  banishment  of  all  favorers 
of  Wyclif  with  the  seizure  and  destruction  of  all  Lollard 
books  on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  the  University's  privileges. 
The  threat  produced  its  effect.  Herford  and  Repyngdon 
appealed  in  vain  to  John  of  Gaunt  for  protection  ;  the 
Duke  himself  denounced  them  as  heretics  against  the 
Sacrament  of  the  Altar,  and  after  much  evasion  they 
were  forced  to  make  a  formal  submission.  Within  Ox- 
ford itself  the  suppression  of  Lollardism  was  complete, 
but  with  the  death  of  religious  freedom  all  trace  of  in- 
tellectual life  suddenly  disappears.  The  century  which 
followed  the  triumph  of  Courtenay  is  the  most  barren  in 
its  annals,  nor  was  the  sleep  of  the  University  broken 
till  the  advent  of  the  New  Learning  restored  to  it  some 
of  the  life  and  liberty  which  the  Primate  had  so  roughly 
trodden  out. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  463 

Nothing  marks  more  strongly  the  grandeur  of  Wyclif  s 
position  as  the  last  of  the  great  schoolmen  than  the  reluc- 
tance of  so  bold  a  man  as  Courtenay,  even  after  his  triumph 
over  Oxford,  to  take  extreme  measures  against  the  head 
of  Lollardry.  Wyclif,  though  summoned,  had  made  no 
appearance  before  the  "  Council  of  the  Earthquake." 
"  Pontius  Pilate  and  Herod  are  made  friends  to-day," 
was  his  bitter  comment  on  the  new  union  which  proved 
to  have  sprung  up  between  the  prelates  and  the  monastic 
orders  who  had  so  long  been  at  variance  with  each  other ; 
"  since  they  have  made  a  heretic  of  Christ,  it  is  an  easy 
inference  for  them  to  count  simple  Christians  heretics." 
He  seems  indeed  to  have  been  sick  at  the  moment,  but 
the  announcement  of  the  final  sentence  roused  him  to  life 
again.  He  petitioned  the  King  and  Parliament  that  he 
might  be  allowed  freely  to  prove  the  doctrines  he  had  put 
forth,  and  turning  with  characteristic  energy  to  the  attack 
of  his  assailants,  he  asked  that  all  religious  vows  might 
be  suppressed,  that  tithes  might  be  diverted  to  the  main- 
tenance of  the  poor  and  the  clergy  maintained  by  the  free 
alms  of  their  flocks,  that  the  Statutes  of  Provisors  and 
Praemunire  might  be  enforced  against  the  Papacy,  that 
Churchmen  might  be  declared  incapable  of  secular  offices, 
and  imprisonment  for  excommunication  cease.  Finally, 
in  the  teeth  of  the  council's  condemnation,  he  demanded 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  Eucharist  which  he  advocated 
might  be  freely  taught.  If  he  appeared  in  the  following 
year  before  the  convocation  at  Oxford  it  was  to  perplex 
his  opponents  by  a  display  of  scholastic  logic  which  per- 
mitted him  to  retire  without  any  retractation  of  his  sac- 
ramental heresy.  For  the  time  his  opponents  seemed 
satisfied  with  his  expulsion  from  the  University,  but  in 
his  retirement  at  Lutterworth  he  was  forging  during  these 
troubled  years  the  great  weapon  which,  wielded  by  other 
hands  than  his  own,  was  to  produce  so  terrible  an  effect 
on  the  triumphant  hierarchy.  An  earlier  translation  of 
the  Scriptures,  in  part  of  which  he  was  aided  by  his 
scholar  Herford,  was  being  revised  and  brought  to  the 
second  form  which  is  better  known  as  "  Wyclif  s  Bible," 
when  death  drew  near.  The  appeal  of  the  prelates  to 


464  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

Rome  was  answered  at  last  by  a  Brief  ordering  him  to 
appear  at  the  Papal  Court.  His  failing  strength  exhausted 
itself  in  a  sarcastic  reply  which  explained  that  his  refusal 
to  comply  with  the  summons  simply  sprang  from  broken 
health.  *•!  am  always  glad,"  ran  the  ironical  answer, 
**  to  explain  my  faith  to  any  one,  and  above  all  to  the 
Bishop  of  Rome ;  for  I  take  it  for  granted  that  if  it  be 
orthodox  he  will  confirm  it,  if  it  be  erroneous  he  will 
correct  it.  I  assume, too  that  as  chief  Vicar  of  Christ 
upon  earth  the  Bishop  of  Rome  is  of  all  mortal  men  most 
bound  to  the  law  of  Christ's  Gospel,  for  among  the  dis- 
ciples of  Christ  a  majority  is  not  reckoned  by  simply 
counting  heads  in  the  fashion  of  this  world,  but  according 
to  the  imitation  of  Christ  on  either  side.  Now  Christ 
during  His  life  upon  earth  was  of  all  men  the  poorest, 
casting  from  him  all  worldly  authority.  I  deduce  from 
these  premisses  as  a  simple  counsel  of  my  own  that  the 
Pope  should  surrender  all  temporal  authority  to  the  civil 
power  and  advise  his  clergy  to  do  the  same."  The  bold- 
ness of  his  words  sprang  perhaps  from  a  knowledge  that 
his  end  was  near.  The  terrible  strain  on  energies  en- 
feebled bj  age  and  study  had  at  last  brought  its  inevitable 
result,  and  a  stroke  of  paralysis  while  Wyclif  was  hearing 
mass  in  his  parish  church  of  Lutterworth  was  followed 
on  the  next  day  by  his  death. 

The  persecution  of  Conrtenay  deprived  the  religious 
reform  of  its  more  learned  adherents  and  of  the  support 
of  the  Universities.  Wyclif  s  death  robbed  it  of  its  head 
at  a  moment  when  little  had  been  done  save  a  work  of 
destruction.  From  that  moment  Lollardism  ceased  to  be 
in  any  sense  an  organized  movement,  and  crumbled  into 
a  general  spirit  of  revolt.  All  the  religious  and  social 
discontent  of  the  times  floated  instinctively  to  this  new 
centre.  The  socialist  dreams  of  the  peasantry,  the  new 
and  keener  spirit  of  personal  morality,  the  hatred  of  the 
friars,  the  jealousy  of  the  great  lords  towards  the  prelacy, 
the  fanaticism  of  the  reforming  zealot  were  blended  to- 
gether in  a  common  hostility  to  the  Church  and  a  common 
resol  ve  to  substitute  personal  religion  for  its  dogmatic  and 
ecclesiastical  system.  Butit  was  this  want  of  organiza- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  465 

tion,  this  looseness  and  fluidity  of  the  new  movement,  that 
made  it  penetrate  through  every  class  of  society.  Women 
as  well  as  men  became  the  preachers  of  the  new  sect. 
Lollardry  had  its  own  schools,  its  own  books ,  its  pamph- 
lets were  passed  everywhere  from  hand  to  hand;  scurril- 
ous ballads  which  revived  the  old  attacks  of  "  Golias  "  in 
the  Angevin  times  upon  the  wealth  and  luxury  of  the 
clerg}r  were  sung  at  every  corner.  Nobles  like  the  Earl 
of  Salisbury  and  at  a  later  time  Sir  John  Oldcastle  placed 
themselves  openly  at  the  head  of  the  cause  and  threw 
open  their  gates  as  a  refuge  for  its  missionaries.  London 
in  its  hatred  of  the  clergy  became  fiercely  Lollard,  and 
defended  a  Lollard  preacher  who  ventured  to  advocate 
the  new  doctrines  from  the  pulpit  of  St.  Paul's.  One  of 
its  mayors,  John  of  Northampton,  showed  the  influence 
of  the  new  morality  by  the  Puritan  spirit  in  which  he 
dealt  with  the  morals  of  the  city.  Compelled  to  act,  as 
he  said,  by  the  remissness  of  the  clergy  who  connived  for 
money  at  every  kind  of  debauchery,  he  arrested  the  loose 
women,  cut  off  their  hair,  and  carted  them  through  the 
streets  as  objects  of  public  scorn.  But  the  moral  spirit 
of  the  new  movement,  though  infinitely  its  grander  side, 
was  less  dangerous  to  the  Church  than  its  open  repudia- 
tion of  the  older  doctrines  and  systems  of  Christendom. 
Out  of  the  floating  mass  of  opinion  which  bore  the  name 
of  Lollardry  one  faith  gradually  evolved  itself,  a  faith  in 
the  sole  authority  of  the  Bible  as  a  source  of  religious 
truth.  The  translation  of  Wyclif  did  its  work.  Scripture, 
complains  a  canon  of  Leicester,  "  became  a  vulgar  thing, 
and  more  open  to  lay  folk  and  women  that  knew  how  to 
read  than  it  is  wont  to  be  to  clerks  themselves."  Conse- 
quences which  Wyclif  had  perhaps  shrunk  from  drawing 
were  boldly  drawn  by  his  disciples.  The  Church  was 
declared  to  have  become  apostate,  its  priesthood  was 
denounced  as  no  priesthood,  its  sacraments  as  idolatry. 

It  was  in  vain  that  the  clergy  attempted  to  stifle  the 
new  movement  by  their  old  weapon  of  persecution.  The 
jealousy  entertained  by  the  baronage  and  gentry  of  every 
pretension  of  the  Church  to  secular  power  foiled  its 
efforts  to  make  persecution  effective.  At  the  moment  of 

30 


466  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  Peasant  Revolt  Courtenay  procured  the  enactment 
of  a  statute  which  commissioned  the  sheriffs  to  seize  all 
persons  convicted  before  the  bishops  of  preaching  heresy. 
But  the  statute  was  repealed  in  the  next  session,  and 
the  Commons  added  to  the  bitterness  of  the  blow  by 
their  protest  that  they  considered  it  "  in  nowise  their  in- 
terest to  be  more  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  prelates  or 
more  bound  by  them  than  their  ancestors  had  been  in 
times  past."  Heresy  indeed  was  still  a  felony  by  the 
common  law,  and  if  as  yet  we  meet  with  no  instances  of 
the  punishment  of  heretics  by  the  fire  it  was  because  the 
threat  of  such  a  death  was  commonly  followed  by  the 
recantation  of  the  Lollard.  But  the  restriction  of  each 
bishop's  jurisdiction  within  the  limits  of  his  own  diocese 
made  it  impossible  to  arrest  the  wandering  preachers  of 
the  new  doctrine,  and  the  civil  punishment — even  if  it 
had  been  sanctioned  by  public  opinion — seems  to  have 
long  fallen  into  desuetude.  Experience  proved  to  the 
prelates  that  few  sheriffs  would  arrest  on  the  mere  war- 
rant of  an  ecclesiastical  officer,  and  that  no  royal  court 
would  issue  the  writ  "  for  the  burning  of  a  heretic  "  on  a 
bishop's  requisition.  But  powerless  as  the  efforts  of  the 
Church  were  for  purposes  of  repression,  they  were 
effective  in  rousing  the  temper  of  the  Lollards  into  a 
bitter  fanaticism.  The  heretics  delighted  in  outraging 
the  religious  sense  of  their  day.  One  Lollard  gentleman 
took  home  the  sacramental  wafer  and  lunched  on  it  with 
wine  and  oysters.  Another  flung  some  images  of  the 
saints  into  his  cellar.  The  Lollard  preachers  stirred  up 
riots  by  the  virulence  of  their  preaching  against  the 
friars.  But  they  directed  even  fiercer  invectives  against 
the  wealth  and  secularity  of  the  great  Churchmen.  In 
a  formal  petition  which  was  laid  before  Parliament  in 
1395  they  mingled  denunciations  of  the  riches  of  the 
clergy  with  an  open  profession  of  disbelief  in  transub- 
stantiation,  priesthood,  pilgrimages,  and  image  worship, 
and  a  demand,  which  illustrates  the  strange  medley  of 
opinions  which  jostled  together  in  the  new  movement, 
that  war  might  be  declared  unchristian  and  that  trades 
such  as  those  of  the  goldsmith  or  the  armorer,  which 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  467 

were  contrary  to  apostolical  poverty,  might  be  banished 
from  the  realm.  They  contended  (and  it  is  remarkable 
that  a  Parliament  of  the  next  reign  adopted  the  state- 
ment) that  from  the  superfluous  revenues  of  the  Church 
if  once  they  were  applied  to  purposes  of  general  utility' 
the  King  might  maintain  fifteen  earls,  fifteen  hundred 
knights,  and  six  thousand  squires,  besides  endowing  a 
hundred  hospitals  for  the  relief  of  the  poor. 

The  distress  of  the  landowners,  the  general  disorgan- 
ization of  the  country,  in  every  part  of  which  bands  of 
marauders  were  openly  defying  the  law,  the  panic  of  the 
Church  and  of  society  at  large  as  the  projects  of  the 
Lollards  shaped  themselves  into  more  daring  and  revo- 
lutionary forms,  added  a  fresh  keenness  to  the  national 
discontent  at  the  languid  and  inefficient  prosecution  of 
the  war.  The  junction  of  the  French  and  Spanish  fleets 
had  made  them  masters  of  the  seas,  and  what  fragments 
were  left  of  Guienne  lay  at  their  mercy.  The  royal 
Council  strove  to  detach  the  House  of  Luxemburg  from 
the  French  alliance  by  winning  for  Richard  the  hand  of 
Anne,  a  daughter  of  the  late  Emperor  Charles  the  Fourth 
who  had  fled  at  Cre9y,  and  sister  of  King  Wenzel  of 
Bohemia  who  was  now  King  of  the  Romans.  But  the 
marriage  remained  without  political  result,  save  that  the 
Lollard  books  which  were  sent  into  their  native  country 
by  the  Bohemian  servants  of  the  new  queen  stirred  the 
preaching  of  John  Huss  and  the  Hussite  wars.  Nor  was 
English  policy  more  successful  in  Flanders.  Under 
Philip  van  Arteveldt,  the  son  of  the  leader  of  1345,  the 
Flemish  towns  again  sought  the  friendship  of  England 
against  France,  but  at  the  close  of  1382  the  towns  were 
defeated  and  their  leader  slain  in  the  great  French 
victory  of  Rosbecque.  An  expedition  to  Flanders  in  the 
following  year  under  the  warlike  Bishop  of  Norwich 
turned  out  a  mere  plunder-raid  and  ended  in  utter  failure. 
A  short  truce  only  gave  France  the  leisure  to  prepare  a 
counter-blow  by  the  despatch  of  a  small  but  well-equip- 
ped force  under  John  de  Vienne  to  Scotland  in  1385. 
Thirty  thousand  Scots  joined  in  the  advance  of  this  force 
over  the  border :  and  though  northern  England  rose  with 


468  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

a  desperate  effort  and  an  English  army  penetrated  as 
far  as  Edinburgh  in  the  hope  of  bringing  the  foe  to  battle 
it  was  forced  to  fall  back  without  an  encounter.  Mean- 
while France  dealt  a  more  terrible  blow  in  the  reduction 
of  Ghent.  The  one  remaining  market  for  English  com- 
merce was  thus  closed  up,  while  the  forces  which  should 
have  been  employed  in  saving  Ghent  and  in  the  protec- 
tion of  the  English  shores  against  the  threat  of  invasion 
were  squandered  by  John  of  Gaunt  in  a  war  which  he 
was  carrying  on  along  the  Spanish  frontier  in  pursuit  of 
the  visionary  crown  which  he  claimed  in  his  wife's  right. 
The  enterprise  showed  that  the  Duke  had  now  abandoned 
the  hope  of  directing  affairs  at  home  and  was  seeking  a 
new  sphere  of  activity  abroad.  To  drive  him  from  the 
realm  had  been  from  the  close  of  the  Peasant  Revolt  the 
steady  purpose  of  the  councillors  who  now  surrounded 
the  young  King,  of  his  favorite  Robert  de  Vere  and  his 
Chancellor  Michael  de  la  Pole,  who  was  raised  in  1385 
to  the  Earldom  of  Suffolk.  The  Duke's  friends  were  ex- 
pelled from  office ;  John  of  Northampton,  the  head  of  his 
adherents  among  the  Commons,  was  thrown  into  prison ; 
the  Duke  himself  was  charged  with  treason  and  threat- 
ened with  arrest.  In  1386  John  of  Gaunt  abandoned  the 
struggle  and  sailed  for  Spain. 

Richard  himself  took  part  in  these  measures  against 
the  Duke.  He  was  now  twenty,  handsome  and  golden- 
haired,  with  a  temper  capable  of  great  actions  and  sud- 
den bursts  of  energy,  but  indolent  and  unequal.  The 
conception  of  kingship  in  which  he  had  been  reared 
made  him  regard  the  constitutional  advance  which  had 
gone  on  during  the  war  as  an  invasion  of  the  rights  of 
his  Crown.  He  looked  on  the  nomination  of  the  royal 
Council  and  the  great  officers  of  state  by  the  two  Houses 
or  the  supervision  of  tho  royal  expenditure  by  the  Com- 
mons as  infringements  on  the  prerogative  which  only  the 
pressure  of  the  war  and  the  weakness  of  a  minority  had 
forced  the  Crown  to  bow  to.  The  judgment  of  his 
councillors  was  one  with  that  of  the  King.  Vere  was 
no  mere  royal  favorite  :  he  was  a  great  noble  and  of  an- 
cient lineage.  Michael  de  la  Pole  was  a  man  of  large 


THE   PAKLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  469 

fortune  and  an  old  servant  of  the  Crown ;  he  had  taken 
part  in  the  war  for  thirty  years,  and  had  been  admiral 
and  captain  of  Calais.  But  neither  were  men  to  counsel 
the  young  King  wisely  in  his  effort  to  obtain  independ- 
ence at  once  of  Parliament  and  of  the  great  nobles. 
His  first  aim  had  been  to  break  the  pressure  of  the  royal 
house  itself,  and  in  his  encounter  with  John  of  Gaunt 
he  had  proved  successful.  But  the  departure  of  the 
Duke  of  Lancaster  only  called  to  the  front  his  brother 
and  his  son.  Thomas  of  Woodstock,  the  Duke  of  Glou- 
cester, had  inherited  much  of  the  lands  and  the  influence 
of  the  old  house  of  Bohun.  Round  Henry,  Earl  of 
Derby,  the  son  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  Blanche  of  Lan- 
caster, the  old  Lancastrian  party  of  constitutional  op- 
position was  once  more  forming  itself.  The  favor  shown 
to  the  followers  of  Wyclif  at  the  Court  threw  on  the 
side  of  this  new  opposition  the  bulk  of  the  bishops  and 
Churchmen.  Richard  himself  showed  no  sympathy  with 
the  Lollards,  but  the  action  of  her  Bohemian  servants 
shows  the  tendencies  of  his  Queen.  Three  members  of 
the  royal  Council  were  patrons  of  the  Lollards,  and  the 
Earl  of  Salisbury,  a  favorite  with  the  King,  was  their 
avowed  head.  The  Commons  displayed  no  hostility  to 
the  Lollards  nor  any  zeal  for  the  Church ;  but  the  luke- 
warm prosecution  o$  the  war,  the  profuse  expenditure 
of  the  Court,  and  above  all  the  manifest  will  of  the  King 
to  free  himself  from  Parliamentary  control,  estranged 
the  Lower  House.  Richard's  haughty  words  told  their 
own  tale.  When  the  Parliament  of  1385  called  for  an 
inquiry  every  year  into  the  royal  household,  the  King 
replied  he  would  inquire  when  he  pleased.  When  it 
prayed  to  know  the  names  of  the  officers  of  state,  he 
answered  that  he  would  change  them  at  his  will. 

The  burden  of  such  answers  and  of  the  policy  they 
revealed  fell  on  the  royal  councillors,  and  the  departure 
of  John  of  Gaunt  forced  the  new  opposition  into  vig- 
orous action.  The  Parliament  of  1386  called  for  the  re- 
moval of  Suffolk.  Richard  replied  that  he  would  not 
for  such  a  prayer  dismiss  a  turnspit  of  his  kitchen.  The 
Duke  of  Gloucester  and  Bishop  Arundel  of  Ely  were 


470  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

sent  by  the  Houses  as  their  envoys,  and  warned  the  King 
that  should  a  ruler  refuse  to  govern  with  the   advice  of 
his  lords  and  by  mad  counsels  work  out  his  private  pur- 
poses it  is  lawful  to  depose  him.     The  threat  secured 
Suffolk's  removal ;  he  was  impeached  for  corruption  and 
maladministration,  and  condemned  to  forfeiture  and  im- 
prisonment.    It  was  only  by  submitting  to  the  nomina- 
tion of  a  Continual  Council,  with  the  Duke  of  Glouces- 
ter at  its  head,  that  Richard  could  obtain  a  grant  of  sub- 
sidies.    But  the  Houses  were  no  sooner  broken  up  than 
Suffolk  was  released,  and  in  1387  the  }roung  King  rode 
through  the  country  calling  on  the  sheriffs  to  raise   men 
against  the  barons,  and  bidding   them  suffer  no  knight 
of  the  shire  to  be  returned  for  the  next  Parliament  "  save 
one  whom  the  King  and  his  Council  chose."     The  gen- 
eral ill-will  foiled  both  his  efforts  :  and  he  was  forced  to 
take  refuge  in  an  opinion  of  five  of  the  judges  that  the 
Continual  Council  was  unlawful,  the  sentence  on  Suf- 
folk erroneous,  and  that   the  Lords   and  Commons  had 
no  power  to    remove  a  King's  servant.     Gloucester  an- 
swered the  challenge  by  taking  up  arms,  and  a  general 
refusal  to  fight  for  the  King  forced  Richard  once  more  to 
yield.     A  terrible  vengeance  was  taken  on  his  supporters 
in  the  recent  schemes.     In  the  Parliament  of  1388  Glou- 
cester, with  the  four  Earls  of  Deri)y,  Arundel,  Warwick, 
and  Nottingham  appealed  on  a   charge  of  high  treason 
Suffolk  and  De  Vere,  the  Archbishop  ofYork,  the  Chief 
Justice  Tresilian,  and  Sir  Nicholas  Bramber.     The  first 
two  fled,  Suffolk  to   France,  De  Vere   after  a  skirmish 
at  Radcot  Bridge   to  Ireland ;  but  the  Archbishop  was 
deprived  of  his  see,  Bramber    beheaded,  and  Tresilian 
hanged.     The  five  judges  were   banished,  and  Sir  Simon 
Burley  with  three  other  members  of  the  royal  household 
sent  to  the  block. 

At  the  prayer  of  the  "Wonderful  Parliament,"  as 
some  called  this  assembly,  or  as  others  with  more  justice 
"  The  Merciless  Parliament,"  it  was  provided  that  all 
officers  of  state  should  henceforth  be  named  in  Parlia- 
ment or  by  the  Continual  Council.  Gloucester  remained 
at  the  head  of  the  latter  body,  but  his  power  lasted 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  471 

hardly  a  year.  In  May  1389  Richard  found  himself 
strong  enough  to  break  down  the  government  by  a  word. 
Entering  the  Council  he  suddenly  asked  his  uncle  how 
old  he  was.  "  Your  highness,"  answered  Gloucester, 
"  is  in  your  twenty-second  year !  "  "  Then  I  am  old 
enough  to  manage  my  own  affairs,"  said  Richard  coolly ; 
"  I  have  been  longer  under  guardianship  than  any  ward 
in  my  realm.  I  thank  you  for  your  past  services,  my 
lords,  but  I  need  them  no  more."  The  resolution  was 
welcomed  by  the  whole  country  ;  and  Richard  justified 
the  country's  hopes  by  wielding  his  new  power  with 
singular  wisdom  and  success.  He  refused  to  recall  de 
Vere  or  the  five  judges.  The  intercession  of  John  of 
Gaunt  on  his  return  from  Spain  brought  about  a  full 
reconciliation  with  the  Lords  Appellant.  A  truce  was 
concluded  with  France,  and  its  renewal  year  after  year 
enabled  the  King  to  enlighten  the  burden  of  taxation. 
Richard  announced  his  purpose  to  govern  by  advice  of 
Parliament;  he  soon  restored  the  Lords  Appellant  to  his 
Council,  and  committed  the  chief  offices  of  state  to  great 
Churchmen  like  Wykeham  and  Arundel.  A  series  of 
statutes  showed  the  activity  of  the  Houses.  A  Statute 
of  Pro  visors  which  re-enacted  those  of  Edward  the  Third 
was  passed  in  1390 ;  the  Statufe  of  Prsemunire,  which 
punished  the  obtaining  of  bulls  or  other  instruments 
from  Rome  with  forfeiture,  in  1393.  The  lords  were 
bridled  anew  by  a  Statute  of  Maintenance,  which  forbade 
their  violently  supporting  other  men's  causes  in  courts  of 
justice  or  giving  "livery  "  to  a  host  of  retainers.  The 
Statute  of  Uses  in  1391,  which  rendered  illegal  the  de- 
vices which  had  been  invented  to  frustrate  that  of  Mort- 
main, showed  the  same  resolve  to  deal  firmly  with  the 
Church.  A  reform  of  the  staple  and  other  mercantile 
enactments  proved  the  King's  care  for  trade.  Through- 
out the  legislature  of  these  eight  years  we  see  the  same 
tone  of  coolness  and  moderation.  Eager  as  he  was  to 
win  the  good-will  of  the  Parliament  and  the  Church, 
Richard  refused  to  bow  to  the  panic  of  the  landowners 
or  to  second  the  persecution  of  the  priesthood.  The  de- 
mands of  the  Parliament  that  education  should  be  denied 


472  HISTORY   OP   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

to  the  sons  of  villeins  was  refused.  Lollardry  as  a  social 
danger  was  held  firmly  at  bay,  and  in  1387  the  King 
ordered  Lollard  books  to  be  seized  and  brought  before 
the  Council.  But  the  royal  officers  showed  little  zeal  in 
aiding  the  bishops  to  seize  or  punish  the  heretical 
teachers. 

It  was  in  the  period  of  peace  which  was  won  for  the 
country  by  the  wisdom  and  decision  of  its  young  King 
that  England  listened  to  the  voice  of  her  first  great 
singer.  The  work  of  Chaucer  marks  the  final  settlement 
of  the  English  tongue.  The  close  of  the  great  movement 
towards  national  unity  which  had  been  going  on  ever 
since  the  Conquest  was  shown  in  the  middle  of  the  four- 
teenth century  by  the  disuse,  even  amongst  the  nobler 
classes,  of  the  French  tongue.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of 
the  grammar  schools  and  of  the  strength  of  fashion  Eng- 
lish won  its  way  throughout  the  reign  of  Edward  the 
Third  to  its  final  triumph  in  that  of  his  grandson.  It 
was  ordered  to  be  used  in  courts  of  law  in  1362  "  because 
the  French  tongue  is  much  unknown,"  and  the  following 
year  it  was  employed  by  the  Chancellor  in  opening  Par- 
liament. Bishops  began  to  preach  in  English,  and  the 
English  tracts  of  Wyclif  made  it  once  more  a  literary 
tongue.  We  see  the  general  advance  in  two  passages 
from  writers  of  Edward's  and  Richard's  reigns.  "  Chil- 
dren in  school,"  says  Higden,  a  writer  of  the  first  period, 
"  against  the  usage  and  manner  of  all  other  nations  be 
compelled  for  to  leave  their  own  language  and  for  to 
construe  their  lessons  and  their  things  in  French,  and  so 
they  have  since  the  Normans  first  came  into  England. 
Also  gentlemen  children  taught  for  to  speak  French 
from  the  time  that  they  be  rocked  in  their  cradle,  and 
know  how  to  speak  and  play  with  a  child's  toy ;  and 
uplandish  (or  country)  men  will  liken  themselves  to 
gentlemen,  and  strive  with  great  busyness  to  speak 
French  for  to  be  more  told  of."  "  This  manner,"  adds 
John  of  Trevisa,  Higden's  translator  in  Richard's  time, 
"  was  much  used  before  the  first  murrain  (the  Black 
Death  of  1349),  and  is  since  somewhat  changed.  For 
John  Cornwal,  a  master  of  grammar,  changed  the  lore  in 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  473 

grammar  school  and  construing  of  French  into  English- 
and  Richard  learned  this  manner  of  teaching  of  him  as 
other  men  did  of  Pencrych.  So  that  now,  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1385,  and  of  the  second  King  Richard  after  the 
Conquest  nine,  in  all  the  grammar  schools  of  England 
children  leaveth  French,  and  construeth  and  learneth  in 
English.  Also  gentlemen  have  now  much  left  for  to  teach 
their  children  French." 

This  drift  towards  a  general  use  of  the  national  tongue 
told  powerfully  on  literature.  The  influence  of  the 
French  romances,  everywhere  tended  to  make  French 
the  one  literary  language  at  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  in  England  this  influence  had  been  backed 
by  the  French  tone  of  the  court  of  Henry  the  Third  and 
the  three  Edwards.  But  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of 
Edward  the  long  French  romances  needed  to  be  trans- 
lated even  for  knightly  hearers.  "  Let  clerks  indite  in 
Latin,"  says  the  author  of  the  "  Testament  of  Love," 
"  and  let  Frenchmen  in  their  French  also  indite  their 
quaint  terms,  for  it  is  kindly  to  their  mouths  ;  and  let  us 
show  our  fantasies  in  such  wordes  as  we  learned  of  our 
mother's  tongue."  But  the  new  national  life  afforded 
nobler  materials  than  "  fantasies  "  now  for  English  liter- 
ature. With  the  completion  of  the  work  of  national 
unity  had  come  the  completion  of  the  work  of  national 
freedom.  The  vigor  of  English  life  showed  itself  in  the 
wide  extension  of  commerce,  in  the  progress  of  the  towns, 
and  the  upgrowth  of  a  free  yeomanry.  It  gave  even 
nobler  signs  of  its  activity  in  the  spirit  of  national  in- 
dependence and  moral  earnestness  which  awoke  at  the 
call  of  Wyclif.  New  forces  of  thought  and  feeling  which 
were  destined  to  tell  on  every  age  of  our  later  history 
broke  their  way  through  the  crust  of  feudalism  in  the 
socialist  revolt  of  the  Lollards,  and  a  sudden  burst  of 
military  glory  threw  its  glamour  over  the  age  of  Cre9y 
and  Poitiers.  It  is  this  new  gladness  of  a  great  people 
which  utters  itself  in  the  verse  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer. 
Chaucer  was  born  about  1340,  the  son  of  a  London 
vintner  who  lived  in  Thames  Street ;  and  it  was  in  London 
that  the  bulk  of  his  life  was  spent.  His  family,  though 


474  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

not  noble,  seems  to  have  been  of  some  importance,  for 
from  the  opening  of  his  career  we  find  Chaucer  in  close 
connection  with  the  Court.  At  sixteen  he  was  made 
page  to  the  wife  of  Lionel  of  Clarence ;  at  nineteen  he 
first  bore  arms  in  the  campaign  of  1359.  But  he  was 
luckless  enough  to  be  made  prisoner ;  and  from  the  time 
of  his  release  after  the  treaty  of  Bretigny  he  took  no 
further  share  in  the  military  enterprises  of  his  time.  He 
seems  again  to  have  returned  to  service  about  the  Court, 
and  it  was  now  that  his  first  poems  made  their  appear- 
ance, the  "  Compleynte  to  Pity  "  in  1368,  and  in  1369  the 
"  Death  of  Blanch  the  Duchesse,"  the  wife  of  John  of 
Gaunt  who  from  this  time  at  least  may  be  looked  upon 
as  his  patron.  It  may  have  been  to  John's  influence  that 
he  owed  his  employment  in  seven  diplomatic  missions 
which  were  probably  connected  with  the  financial  straits 
of  the  Crown.  Three  of  these,  in  1372,  1374,  and  1378, 
carried  him  to  Italy.  He  visited  Genoa  and  the  brilliant 
court  of  the  Visconti  at  Milan  ;  at  Florence,  where  the 
memory  of  Dante,  the  "  great  master "  whom  he  com- 
memorates so  reverently  in  his  verse,  was  still  living,  he 
may  have  met  Boccaccio ;  at  Padua,  like  his  own  clerk 
of  Oxenford,  he  possibly  caught  the  story  of  Griseldis 
from  the  lips  of  Petrarca. 

It  was  these  visits  to  Italy  which  gave  us  the  Chaucer 
whom  we  know.  From  that  hour  his  work  stands  out 
in  vivid  contrast  with  the  poetic  literature  from  the  heart 
of  which  it  sprang.  The  long  French  romances  were  the 
product  of  an  age  of  wealth  and  ease,  of  indolent  curios- 
ity, of  a  fanciful  and  self-indulgent  sentiment.  Of  the 
great  passions  which  gave  life  to  the  Middle  Ages,  that 
of  religious  enthusiasm  had  degenerated  into  the  conceits 
of  Mariolatry,  that  of  war  into  the  extravagances  of 
Chivalry.  Love  indeed  remained ;  it  was  the  one  theme 
of  troubadour  and  trouveur  ;  but  it  was  a  love  of  refine- 
ment, of  romantic  follies,  of  scholastic  discussions,  of 
sensuous  enjoyment — a  plaything  rather  than  a  passion. 
Nature  had  to  reflect  the  pleasant  indolence  of  man  ;  the 
song  of  the  minstrel  moved  through  a  perpetual  May- 
time  ;  the  grass  was  ever  green ;  the  music  of  the  lark 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  475 

and  the  nightingale  rang  out  from  field  and  thicket. 
There  was  a  gay  avoidance  of  all  that  is  serious,  moral, 
or  reflective  in  man's  life :  life  was  too  amusing  to  be 
serious,  too  piquant,  too  sentimental,  too  full  of  interest 
andgayety  and  chat.  It  was  an  age  of  talk;  "mirth  is 
none,"  says  Chaucer's  host,  "  to  ride  on  by  the  way  dumb 
as  a  stone  ;  •'  and  the  Trouveur  aimed  simply  at  being  the 
most  agreeable  talker  of  his  day.  His  romances,  his 
rimes  of  Sir  Tristram,  his  Romance  of  the  Rose,  are  full 
of  color  and  fantasy,  endless  in  detail,  but  with  a  sort 
of  gorgeous  idleness  about  their  very  length,  the  minute- 
ness of  their  description  of  outer  things,  the  vagueness 
of  their  touch  when  it  passes  to  the  subtler  inner  world. 
It  was  with  this  literature  that  Chaucer  had  till  now 
been  familiar,  and  it  was  this  which  he  followed  in  his 
early  work.  But  from  the  time  of  his  visits  to  Milan 
and  Genoa  his  sympathies  drew  him  not  to  the  dying 
verse  of  France  but  to  the  new  and  mighty  upgrowth  of 
poetry  in  Italy.  Dante's  eagle  looks  at  him  from  the 
sun.  "  Fraunces  Petrark,  the  laureat  poete,"  is  to  him 
one  "  whose  rethorique  sweete,  enluymned  al  Itail  of 
poetrie."  The  "  Troilus  "  which  he  produced  about  1382  is 
an  enlarged  English  version  of  Boccaccio's  "  Filostrato ; " 
the  Knight's  Tale,  whose  first  draft  is  of  the  same  period, 
bears  slight  traces  of  his  Teseide.  It  was  indeed  the 
"  Decameron  "  which  suggested  the  very  form  of  the 
"  Canterbury  Tales,"  the  earliest  of  which,  such  as  those  of 
the  Doctor,  the  Man  of  Law,  the  Clerk,  the  Prioress,  the 
Franklin,  and  the  Squire,  may  probably  be  referred  like 
the  Parliament  of  Foules  and  the  House  of  Fame  to  this 
time  of  Chaucer's  life.  But  even  while  changing,  as  it 
were,  the  front  of  English  poetry  Chaucer  preserves  his 
own  distinct  personality.  If  he  quizzes  in  the  rime  of 
Sir  Thopaz  the  wearisome  idleness  of  the  French  romance 
he  retains  all  that  was  worth  retaining  of  the  French 
temper,  its  rapidity  and  agility  of  movement,  its  light- 
ness and  brilliancy  of  touch,  its  airy  mockery,  its  gayety 
and  good  humor,  its  critical  coolness  and  self-control. 
The  French  wit  quickens  in  him  more  than  in  any 
English  writer  the  sturdy  sense  and  shrewdness  of  our 


476  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

national  disposition,  corrects  its  extravagance,  and  re- 
lieves its  somewhat  ponderous  morality.  If  on  the  other 
hand  he  echoes  the  joyous  carelessness  of  the  Italian  tale, 
he  tempers  it  with  the  English  seriousness.  As  he  follows 
Boccaccio  all  his  changes  are  on  the  side  of  purity  ;  and 
when  the  Troilus  of  the  Florentine  ends  with  the  old 
sneer  at  the  changeableness  of  woman  Chaucer  bids  us 
"  look  Godward,"  and  dwells  on  the  unchangeableness  of 
Heaven. 

The  genius  of  Chaucer,  however,  was  neither  French 
nor  Italian,  whatever  element  he  might  borrow  from 
either  literature,  but  English  to  the  core ;  and  from  the 
year  1384  all  trace  of  foreign  influence  dies  away. 
Chaucer  had  now  reached  the  climax  of  his  poetic  power. 
He  was  a  busy,  practical  worker,  Comptroller  of  the 
Customs  in  1374,  of  the  Petty  Customs  in  1382,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Commons  in  the  Parliament  of  1386.  The  fall 
of  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  from  power  may  have  deprived 
him  of  employment  for  a  time,  but  from  1389  to  1391 
he  was  Clerk  of  the  Royal  Works,  busy  with  repairs  and 
building  at  Westminster,  Windsor,  and  the  Tower.  His 
air  indeed  was  that  of  a  student  rather  than  of  a  man  of 
the  world.  A  single  portrait  has  preserved  for  us  his 
forked  beard,  his  dark-colored  dress,  the  knife  and  pen- 
case  at  his  girdle,  and  we  may  supplement  this  portrait 
by  a  few  vivid  touches  of  his  own.  The  sly,  elvish  face 
the  quick  walk,  the  plump  figure  and  portly  waist  were 
those  of  a  genial  an4  humorous  man  ;  but  men  jested  at 
his  silence,  his  abstraction,  his  love  of  study.  "  Thou 
lookest  as  thou  wouldest  find  an  hare,"  laughs  the  host, 
"  and  even  on  the  ground  I  see  thee  stare."  He  heard 
little  of  his  neighbors'  talk  when  office  work  in  Thames 
Street  was  over.  "  Thou  goest  home  to  thy  own  house 
anon,  and  also  dumb  as  a  stone  thou  sittest  at  another 
book  till  fully  dazed  is  thy  look,  and  livest  thus  as  an 
heremite,  although,"  he  adds  slyly,  "  thy  abstinence  is 
lite,"  or  little.  But  of  this  seeming  abstraction  from  the 
world  about  him  there  is  not  a  trace  in  Chaucer's  verse. 
We  see  there  how  keen  his  observation  was,  how  vivid 
and  intense  his  sympathy  with  nature  and  the  men 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  477 

among  whom  he  moved.  "  Farewell,  my  book,"  he  cried 
as  spring  came  after  winter  and  the  lark's  song  roused 
him  at  dawn  to  spend  hours  gazing  alone  on  the  daisy 
whose  beauty  he  sang.  The  field  and  stream  and  flower 
and  bird,  much  as  he  loved  them,  were  less  to  him  than 
man.  No  poetry  was  ever  more  human  than  Chaucer's, 
none  ever  came  more  frankly  and  genially  home  to  men 
than  his  "  Canterbury  Tales." 

It  was  the  continuation  and  revision  of  this  work 
which  mainly  occupied  him  during  the  years  from  1384 
to  1390.  Its  best  stories,  those  of  the  Miller,  the  Reeve, 
the  Cook,  the  Wife  of  Bath,  the  Merchant,  the  Friar, 
the  Nun,  the  Priest,  and  the  Pardoner,  are  ascribed  to 
this  period,  as  well  as  the  Prologue.  The  framework 
which  Chaucer  chose — that  of  a  pilgrimage  from  London 
to  Canterbury — not  only  enabled  him  to  string  these 
tales  together,  but  lent  itself  admirably  to  the  peculiar 
characteristics  of  his  poetic  temper,  his  dramatic  ver- 
satility and  the  universality  of  his  sympathy.  His  tales 
cover  the  whole  field  of  mediaeval  poetry  ;  the  legend  of 
the  priest,  the  knightly  romance,  the  wonder-tale  of  the 
traveller,  the  broad  humor  of  the  fabliau,  allegory  and 
apologue,  all  are  there.  He  finds  a  yet  wider  scope  for 
his  genius  in  the  persons  who  tell  these  stories,  the  thirty 
pilgrims  who  start  in  the  May  morning  from  the  Tabard 
in  Southwark — thirty  distinct  figures,  representatives  of 
every  class  of  English  society  from  the  noble  to  the 
ploughman.  We  see  the  "  verray  perfight  gen  til  knight  " 
in  cassock  and  coat  of  mail,  with  his  curly-headed  squire 
beside  him,  fresh  as  the  May  morning,  and  behind  them 
the  brown-faced  yeoman  in  his  coat  and  hood  of  green 
with  a  mighty  bo  win  his  hand.  A  group  of  ecclesiastics 
light  up  for  us  the  medieval  church — the  brawny  hunt- 
loving  monk,  whose  bridle  jingles  as  loud  and  clear  as 
the  chapel-bell — the  wanton  friar,  first  among  the  beggars 
and  harpers  of  the  country  side — the  poor  parson,  thread- 
bare, learned,  and  devout  ("Christ's  lore  and  his  apostles 
twelve  he  taught,  and  first  he  followed  it  himself  ") — 
the  summoner  with  his  fiery  face — the  pardoner  with  his 
wallet  "  bretfull  of  pardons,  come  from  Rome  all  hot " — 


478  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  lively  prioress  with  her  courtly  French  lisp,  her  soft 
little  red  mouth,  and  "Amor  vincit  omnia"  graven  on 
her  brooch.  Learning  is  there  in  the  portly  person  of 
the  doctor  of  physic,  rich  with  the  profits  of  pestilence — 
the  busy  serjeant-at-law,  "  that  ever  seemed  busier  than 
he  was  " — the  hollow-cheeked  clerk  of  Oxford  with  his 
love  of  books  and  short  sharp  sentences  that  disguise  a 
latent  tenderness  which  breaks  out  at  last  in  the  story 
of  Griseldis.  Around  them  crowd  types  of  English 
industry ;  the  merchant ;  the  franklin  in  whose  house 
"  it  snowed  of  meat  and  drink ;  "  the  sailor  fresh  from 
frays  in  the  channel ;  the  buxom  wife  of  Bath ;  the 
broad-shouldered  miller ;  the  haberdasher,  carpenter, 
weaver,  dyer,  tapestry-maker,  each  in  the  livery  of  his 
craft ;  and  last  the  honest  ploughman  who  would  dike 
and  delve  for  the  poor  without  hire.  It  is  the  first  time 
in  English  poetry  that  we  are  brought  face  to  face  not 
with  characters  of  allegories  or  reminiscences  of  the  past, 
but  with  living  and  breathing  men,  men  distinct  in 
temper  and  sentiment  as  in  face  or  costume  or  mode  of 
speech ;  and  with  this  distinctness  of  each  maintained 
throughout  the  story  by  a  thousand  shades  of  expression 
and  action.  It  is  the  first  time,  too,  that  we  meet  with 
dramatic  power  which  not  only  creates  each  character 
but  combines  it  with  its  fellows,  which  not  only  adjusts 
each  tale  or  jest  to  the  temper  of  the  person  who  utters 
it,  but  fuses  all  into  a  poetic  unity.  It  is  life  in  its 
largeness,  its  variety,  its  complexity,  which  surrounds  us 
in  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."  In  some  of  the  stories 
indeed,  which  were  composed  no  doubt  at  an  earlier 
time,  there  is  the  tedium  of  the  old  romance  or  the 
pedantry  of  the  schoolman  ;  but  taken  as  a  whole  the 
poem  is  the  work  not  of  a  man  of  letters  but  of  a  man 
of  action.  Chaucer  has. received  his  training  from  war, 
courts,  business,  travel — a  training  not  of  books  but  of 
life.  And  it  is  life  that  he  loves — the  delicacy  of  its 
sentiment,  the  breadth  of  its  farce,  its  laughter  and  its 
tears,  the  tenderness  of  its  Griseldis  or  the  Smollett-like 
adventures  of  the  miller  and  the  clerks.  It  is  this  large- 
ness of  heart,  this  wide  tolerance,  which  enables  him  to 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  479 

reflect  man  for  us  as  none  but  Shakspeare  has  ever 
reflected  him,  and  to  do  this  with  a  pathos,  a  shrewd 
sense  and  kindly  humor,  a  freshness  and  joyousness  of 
feeling,  that  even  Shakspeare  has  not  surpassed. 

The  last  ten  years  of  Chaucer's  life  saw  a  few  more  tales 
added  to  the  Pilgrimage  and  a  few  poems  to  his  work  ;  but 
his  power  was  lessening,  and  in  1400  he  rested  from  his 
labors  in  his  last  home,  a  house  in  the  garden  of  St  Mary's 
Chapel  at  Westminster.  His  body  rests  within  the  Abbey 
church.  It  was  strange  that  such  a  voice  should  have 
awakened  no  echo  in  the  singers  that  followed,  but  the  first 
burst  of  English  song  died  as  suddenly  in  Chaucer  as  the 
hope  and  glory  of  his  age.  He  died  indeed  at  the  moment 
of  a  revolution  which  was  the  prelude  to  years  of  national 
discord  and  national  suffering.  Whatever  may  have  been 
the  grounds  of  his  action,  the  rule  of  Richard  the  Second 
after  his  assumption  of  power  had  shown  his  capacity  for 
self-restraint.  Parted  by  his  own  will  from  the  counsellors 
of  his  youth,  calling  to  his  service  the  Lords  Appellant, 
reconciled  alike  with  the  baronage  and  the  Parliament,  the 
young  King  promised  to  be  among  the  noblest  and  wisest 
rulers  that  England  had  seen.  But  the  violent  and 
haughty  temper  which  underlay  this  self-command  showed 
itself  from  time  to  time.  The  Earl  of  Arundel  and  his 
brother  the  bishop  stood  in  the  front  rank  of  the  party 
which  had  coerced  Richard  in  his  early  days  ;  their  influ- 
ence was  great  in  the  new  government.  But  a  strife 
between  the  Earl  and  John  of  Gaunt  revived  the  King's 
resentment  at  the  past  action  of  this  house ;  and  at  the 
funeral  of  Anne  of  Bohemia  in  1394  a  fancied  slight 
roused  Richard  to  a  burst  of  passion.  He  struck  the  Earl 
so  violently  that  the  blow  drew  blood.  But  the  quarrel 
was  patched  up,  and  the  reconciliation  was  followed  by 
the  elevation  of  Bishop  Arundel  to  the  vacant  Primacy 
in  1396.  In  the  preceding  year  Richard  had  crossed  ^  to 
Ireland  and  in  a  short  autumn  campaign  reduced  its  native 
chiefs  again  to  submission.  Fears  of  Lollard  disturbances 
soon  recalled  him,  but  these  died  at  the  King's  presence, 
and  Richard  was  able  to  devote  himself  to  the  negotiation 
of  a  marriage  which  was  to  be  the  turning  point  of  his 


480  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

reign.  His  policy  throughout  the  recent  years  had  been 
a  policy  of  peace.  It  was  war  which  rendered  the  Crown 
helpless  before  the  Parliament,  and  peace  was  needful  if 
the  work  of  constant  progress  was  not  to  be  undone.  But 
the  short  truces,  renewed  from  time  to  time,  which  he  had 
as  yet  secured  were  insufficient  for  this  purpose,  for  so 
long  as  war  might  break  out  in  the  coming  year  the  King's 
hands  were  tied.  The  impossibility  of  renouncing  the 
claim  to  the  French  crown  indeed  made  a  formal  peace 
impossible,  but  its  ends  might  be  secured  by  a  lengthened 
truce,  and  it  was  with  a  view  to  this  that  Richard  in  1396 
wedded  Isabella,  the  daughter  of  Charles  the  Sixth  of 
France.  The  bride  was  a  mere  child,  but  she  brought 
with  her  a  renewal  of  the  truce  for  eight  and-twenty- 
years. 

The  match  was  hardly  concluded  when  the  veil  under 
which  Richard  had  shrouded  his  real  temper  began  to  be 
dropped.  His  craving  for  absolute  power,  such  as  he 
witnessed  in  the  Court  of  France,  was  probably  intensified 
from  this  moment  by  a  mental  disturbance  which  gathered 
strength  as  the  months  went  on.  As  if  to  preclude  any 
revival  of  the  war  Richard  had  surrendered  Cherbourg  to 
the  King  of  Navarre  and  now  gave  back  Brest  to  the  Duke 
of  Britanny.  He  was  said  to  have  pledged  himself  at  his 
wedding  to  restore  Calais  to  the  King  of  France.  But 
once  freed  from  all  danger  of  such  a  struggle  the  whole 
character  of  his  rule  seemed  to  change.  His  court  became 
as  crowded  and  profuse  as  his  grandfather's.  Money  was 
recklessly  borrowed  and  as  recklessly  squandered.  The 
King's  pride  became  insane,  and  it  was  fed  with  dreams  of 
winning  the  Imperial  crown  through  the  deposition  of 
Wenzel  of  Bohemia.  The  councillors  with  whom  he  had 
acted  since  his  resumption  of  authority  saw  themselves 
powerless.  John  of  Gaunt  indeed  still  retained  influence 
over  the  King.  It  was  the  support  of  the  Duke  of  Lan- 
caster after  his  return  from  his  Spanish  campaign  which 
had  enabled  Richard  to  hold  in  check  the  Duke  of 
Gloucester  and  the  party  that  he  led  ;  and  the  anxiety 
of  the  young  King  to  retain  this  support  was  seen  in  his 
grant  of  Aquitaine  to  his  uncle,  and  in  the  legitimation 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  481 

of  the  Beauforts,  John's  children  by  a  mistress,  Catherine 
Swinford,  whom  he  married  after  the  death  of  his  second 
wife.  The  friendship  of  the  Duke  brought  with  it  the 
adhesion  of  one  even  more  important,  his  son  Henry,  the 
Earl  of  Derby.  As  heir  through  his  mother,  Blanche  of 
Lancaster,  to  the  estates  and  influence  of  the  Lancastrian 
house,  Henry  was  the  natural  head  of  a  constitutional 
opposition,  and  his  weight  was  increased  by  a  marriage 
with  the  heiress  of  the  house  of  Bohun.  He  had  taken  a 
prominent  part  in  the  overthrow  of  Suffolk  and  De  Vere, 
and  on  the  King's  resumption  of  power  he  had  prudently 
withdrawn  from  the  realm  on  a  vow  of  Crusade,  had 
touched  at  Barbary,  visited  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  in 
1390  sailed  for  Dantzig  and  taken  part  in  a  campaign 
against  the  heathen  Prussians  with  the  Teutonic  Knights. 
Since  his  return  he  had  silently  followed  in  his  father's 
track.  But  the  counsels  of  John  of  Gaunt  were  hardly 
wiser  than  of  old ;  Arundel  had  already  denounced  his 
influence  as  a  hurtful  one ;  and  in  the  events  which  were 
now  to  hurry  quickly  on  he  seems  to  have  gone  hand  in 
hand  with  the  King. 

A  new  uneasiness  was  seen  in  the  Parliament  of  1397, 
and  the  Commons  prayed  for  a  redress  of  the  profusion 
of  the  Court.  Richard  at  once  seized  on  the  opportunity 
for  a  struggle.  He  declared  himself  grieved  that  his 
subjects  should  "  take  on  themselves  any  ordinance  or 
governance  of  the  person  of  the  King  or  his  hostel  or  of 
any  persons  of  estate  whom  he  might  be  pleased  to  have 
in  his  company."  The  Commons  were  at  once  overawed  ; 
they  owned  that  the  cognizance  of  such  matters  belonged 
wholly  to  the  King,  and  gave  up  to  the  Duke  of  Lancaster 
the  name  of  the  member,  Sir  Thomas  Haxey,  who  had 
brought  forward  this  article  of  their  prayer.  The  lords 
pronounced  him  a  traitor,  and  his  life  was  only  saved  by 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  clergyman  and  by  the  interposition 
of  Archbishop  Arundel.  The  Earl  of  Arundel  and  the 
Duke  of  Gloucester  at  once  withdrew  from  Court.  They 
stood  almost  alone,  for  of  the  royal  house  the  Dukes  of 
Lancaster  and  York  with  their  sons  the  Earls  of  Derby 
and  Rutland  were  now  with  the  King,  and  the  old  coad~ 

31 


482  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

jutor  of  Gloucester,  the  Earl  of  Nottingham,  was  in  high 
favor  with  him.  The  Earl  of  Warwick  alone  joined  them, 
and  he  was  included  in  a  charge  of  conspiracy  which  was 
followed  by  the  arrest  of  the  three,  A  fresh  Parliament 
in  September  was  packed  with  royal  partizans,  and  Rich- 
ard moved  boldly  to  his  end.  The  pardons  of  the  Lords 
Appellant  were  revoked.  Archbishop  Arundel  was  im- 
peached and  banished  from  the  realm,  he  was  transferred 
by  the  Pope  to  the  See  of  St.  Andrew's,  and  the  Primacy 
given  to  Roger  Walden.  The  Earl  of  Arundel,  accused 
before  the  Peers  under  John  of  Gaunt  as  High  Steward, 
was  condemned  and  executed  in  a  single  day.  Warwick, 
who  owned  the  truth  of  the  charge,  was  condemned  to 
perpetual  imprisonment.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester  was 
saved  from  a  trial  by  a  sudden  death  in  his  prison  at 
Calais.  A  new  Parliament  at  Shrewsbury  in  the  opening 
of  1398  completed  the  King's  work.  In  three  days  it 
declared  null  the  proceedings  of  the  Parliament  of  1388, 
granted  to  the  King  a  subsidy  on  wool  and  leather  for 
his  life,  and  delegated  its  authority  to  a  standing  committee 
of  eighteen  members  from  both  Houses  with  power  to 
continue  their  sittings  even  after  the  dissolution  of  the 
Parliament  and  to  "  examine  and  determine  all  matters 
and  subjects  which  had  been  moved  in  the  presence  of 
the  King  with  all  the  dependencies  thereof." 

In  a  single  year  the  whole  color  of  Richard's  govern- 
ment had  changed.  He  had  revenged  himself  on  the  men 
who  had  once  held  him  down,  and  his  revenge  was  hardly 
taken  before  he  disclosed  a  plan  of  absolute  government. 
He  had  used  the  Parliament  to  strike  down  the  Primate 
as  well  as  the  greatest  nobles  of  the  realm  and  to  give 
him  a  revenue  for  life  which  enabled  him  to  get  rid  of 
Parliament  itself,  for  the  Permanent  Committee  which  it 
named  were  men  devoted,  as  Richard  held,  to  his  cause. 
John  of  Gaunt  was  at  its  head,  and  the  rest  of  its  lords 
were  those  who  had  backed  the  King  in  his  blow  at 
Gloucester  and  the  Arundels.  Two  however  were  ex- 
cluded. In  the  general  distribution  of  rewards  which 
followed  Gloucester's  overthrow  the  Earl  of  Derby  had 
been  make  Duke  of  Hereford,  the  Earl  of  Nottingham 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      130T — 1461.  483 

Duke  of  Norfolk.  But  at  the  close  of  1397  the  two 
Dukos  charged  each  other  with  treasonable  talk  as  they 
rode  between  Brentford  and  London,  and  the  Permanent 
Committee  ordered  the  matter  to  be  settled  by  a  single 
combat.  In  September  1398  the  Dukes  entered  the  lists ; 
but  Richard  forbade  the  duel,  sentenced  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk to  banishment  for  life,  and  Henry  of  Lancaster  to 
exile  for  six  years.  As  Henry  left  London  the  streets 
were  crowded  with  people  weeping  for  his  fate ;  some 
followed  him  even  to  the  coast.  But  his  withdrawal  re- 
moved the  last  check  on  Richard's  despotism.  He  forced 
from  every  tenant  of  the  Crown  an  oath  to  recognize  the 
acts  of  his  Committee  as  valid,  and  to  oppose  any  attempts 
to  alter  or  revoke  them.  Forced  loans,  the  sale  of  char- 
ters of  pardon  to  Gloucester's  adherents,  the  outlawry 
of  seven  counties  at  once  on  the  plea  that  they  had  sup- 
ported his  enemies  and  must  purchase  pardon,  a  reckless 
interference  with  the  course  of  justice,  roused  into  new 
life  the  old  discontent.  Even  this  might  have  been  defied 
had  not  Richard  set  an  able  and  unscrupulous  leader  at 
its  head.  Leave  had  been  given  to  Henry  of  Lancaster 
to  receive  his  father's  inheritance  on  the  death  of  John 
of  Gaunt,  in  February  1399.  But  an  ordinance  of  the 
Continual  Committee  annulled  this  permission  and  Rich- 
ard seized  the  Lancastrian  estates.  Archbishop  Arundel 
at  once  saw  the  chance  of  dealing  blow  for  blow.  He 
hastened  to  Paris  and  pressed  the  Duke  to  return  to  Eng- 
land, telling  him  how  all  men  there  looked  for  it,  "  espe- 
cially the  Londoners,  who  loved  him  a  hundred  times 
more  than  they  did  the  King."  For  a  while  Henry  re- 
mained buried  in  thought,  "  leaning  on  a  window  over- 
looking a  garden  ;  "  but  Arundel's  pressure  at  last  pre- 
vailed, he  made  his  way  secretly  to  Britanny,  and  with 
fifteen  knights  set  sail  from  Vannes. 

What  had  really  decided  him  was  the  opportunity 
offered  by  Richard's  absence  from  the  realm.  From  the 
opening  of  his  reign  the  King's  attention  had  been  con- 
stantly drawn  to  his  dependent  lordship  of  Ireland.  More 
than  two  hundred  years  had  passed  away  since  the  trou- 
bles which  followed  the  murder  of  Archbishop  Thomas 


484  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

forced  Henry  the  Second  to  leave  his  work  of  conquest 
unfinished,  and  the  opportunity  for  a  complete  reduction 
of  the  island  which  had  been  lost  then  had  never  returned. 
When  Henry  quitted  Ireland  indeed  Leinster  was  wholly 
in  English  hands,  Connaught  bowed  to  a  nominal  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  English  overlordship,  and  for  a 
while  the  work  of  conquest  seemed  to  go  steadily  on. 
John  de  Courcy  penetrated  into  Ulster  and  established 
himself  at  Down-Patrick  ;  and  Henry  planned  the  estab- 
lishment of  his  youngest  son,  John,  as  Lord  of  Ireland. 
But  the  levity  of  the  young  prince,  who  mocked  the  rude 
dresses  of  the  native  chieftains  and  plucked  them  in  insult 
by  the  beard,  soon  forced  his  father  to  recall  him ;  and 
in  the  continental  struggle  which  soon  opened  on  the 
Angevin  kings  as  in  the  constitutional  struggle  within 
England  itself  which  followed  it  all  serious  purpose  of 
completing  the  conquest  of  Ireland  was  forgotten.  Noth- 
ing indeed  but  the  feuds  and  weakness  of  the  Irish  tribes 
enabled  the  adventurers  to  hold  the  districts  of  Drogheda, 
Dublin,  Wexford,  Waterford,  and  Cork,  which  formed 
what  was  thenceforth  known  as  "the  English  Pale." 
In  all  the  history  of  Ireland  no  event  has  proved  more 
disastrous  than  this  half-finished  conquest.  Had  the 
Irish  driven  their  invaders  into  the  sea,  or  the  English 
succeeded  in  the  complete  reduction  of  the  island,  the 
misery  of  its  after  ages  might  have  been  avoided.  A 
struggle  such  as  that  in  which  Scotland  drove  out  its 
conquerors  might  have  produced  a  spirit  of  patriotism 
and  national  unity  which  would  have  formed  a  people  out 
of  the  mass  of  warring  clans.  A  conquest  such  as  that  in 
which  the  Normans  made  England  their  own  would  have 
spread  at  any  rate  the  law,  the  order,  the  civilization  of 
the  conquering  country  over  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  conquered.  Unhappily  Ireland,  while  powerless  to 
effect  its  entire  deliverance,  was  strong  enough  to  hold 
its  assailants  partially  at  bay.  The  country  was  broken 
into  two  halves  whose  conflict  has  never  ceased.  So  far 
from  either  giving  elements  of  civilization  or  good  govern- 
ment to  the  other,  conqueror  and  conquered  reaped  only 
degradation  from  the  ceaseless  conflict.  The  native 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  485 

tribes  lost  whatever  tendency  to  union  or  social  progress 
had  survived  the  invasion  of  the  Danes.  Their  barbarism 
was  intensified  by  their  hatred  of  the  more  civilized  in- 
truders. But  these  intruders  themselves,  penned  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  the  Pale,  brutalized  by  a  merciless 
conflict,  cut  off  from  contact  with  the  refining  influences 
of  a  larger  world,  sank  rapidly  to  the  level  of  the  barbar- 
ism about  them  :  and  the  lawlessness,  the  ferocity,  the 
narrowness  of  feudalism  broke  out  unchecked  in  this 
horde  of  adventurers  who  held  the  land  by  their  sword. 

From  the  first  the  story  of  the  English  Pale  was  a 
story  of  degradation  and  anarchy.  It  needed  the  stern 
vengeance  of  John,  whose  army  stormed  its  strongholds 
and  drove  its  leading  barons  into  exile,  to  preserve  even 
their  fealty  to  the  English  Crown.  John  divided  the 
Pale  into  counties  and  ordered  the  observance  of  the 
English  law ;  but  the  departure  of  hij  army  was  the 
signal  for  a  return  of  the  disorder  he  had  trampled  under 
foot.  Between  Englishmen  and  Irishmen  went  on  a 
ceaseless  and  pitiless  war.  Every  Irishman  without  the 
Pale  was  counted  by  the  English  settlers  an  enemy  and 
a  robber  whose  murder  found  no  cognizance  or  punish- 
ment at  the  hands  of  the  law.  Half  the  subsistence  of 
the  English  barons  was  drawn  from  forays  across  the 
border,  and  these  forays  were  avenged  by  incursions  of 
native  marauders  which  carried  havoc  at  times  to  the 
very  walls  of  Dublin.  Within  the  Pale  itself  the  misery 
was  hardly  less.  The  English  settlers  were  harried  and 
oppressed  by  their  own  baronage  as  much  as  by  the  Irish 
marauders,  while  the  feuds  of  the  English  lords  wasted 
their  strength  and  prevented  any  effective  combination 
either  for  common  conquest  or  common  defence.  So 
utter  seemed  their  weakness  that  Robert  Bruce  saw  in  it 
an  opportunity  for  a  counter-blow  at  his  English  assail- 
ants, and  his  victory  at  Bannockburn  was  followed  up 
by  the  despatch  of  a  Scotch  force  to  Ireland  with  his 
brother  Edward  at  its  head.  A  general  rising  of  the 
Irish  welcomed  this  deliverer  ;  but  the  danger  drove  the 
barons  of  the  Pale  to  a  momentary  union,  and  in  1316 
their  valor  was  proved  on  the  bloody  field  of  Athenree 


486  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

by  the  slaughter  of  eleven  thousand  of  their  foes  and  the 
almost  complete  annihilation  of  the  sept  of  the  O'Con- 
nors. But  with  victory  returned  the  old  anarchy  and 
degradation.  The  barons  of  the  Pale  sank  more  and 
more  into  Irish  chieftains.  The  Fitz-Maurices,  who  be- 
came Earls  of  Desmond  and  whose  vast  territory  in 
Munster  was  erected  into  a  County  Palatine,  adopted  the 
dress  and  manners  of  the  natives  around  them.  The  rapid 
growth  of  this  evil  was  seen  in  the  ruthless  provisions  by 
which  Edward  the  Third  strove  to  check  it  in  his  Statute 
of  Kilkenny.  The  Statute  forbade  the  adoption  of  the 
Irish  language  or  name  or  dress  by  any  man  of  English 
blood  :  it  enforced  within  the  Pale  the  exclusive  use  of 
English  law,  and  made  the  use  of  the  native  or  Brehon 
law,  which  was  gaining  ground,  an  act  of  treason ;  it  made 
treasonable  any  marriage  of  the  Englishry  with  persons 
of  Irish  race,  or  any  adoption  of  English  children  by 
Irish  foster-fathers. 

But  stern  as  they  were  these  provisions  proved  fruit- 
less to  check  the  fusion  of  the  two  races,  while  the  grow- 
ing independence  of  the  Lords  of  the  Pale  threw  off  all 
but  the  semblance  of  obedience  to  the  English  govern- 
ment. It  was  this  which  stirred  Richard  to  a  serious 
effort  for  the  conquest  and  organization  of  the  island. 
In  1386  he  granted  the  "  entire  dominion  "  of  Ireland  with 
the  title  of  its  Duke  to  Robert  de  Vere  on  condition  of 
his  carrying  out  its  utter  reduction.  But  the  troubles  of 
the  reign  soon  recalled  De  Vere,  and  it  was  not  till  the 
truce  with  France  had  freed  his  hands  that  the  King 
again  took  up  his  projects  of  conquest.  In  1394  he 
landed  with  an  army  at  Waterford,  and  received  the 
general  submission  of  the  native  chieftains.  But  the 
Lords  of  the  Pale  held  sullenly  aloof ;  and  Richard  had 
no  sooner  quitted  the  island  than  the  Irish  in  turn  refused 
to  carry  out  their  promise  of  quitting  Leinster,  and  en- 
gaged in  a  fresh  contest  with  the  Earl  of  March,  whom 
the  King  had  proclaimed  as  his  heir  and  left  behind  him 
as  his  lieutenant  in  Ireland.  In  the  summer  of  1398 
March  was  beaten  and  slain  in  battle ;  and  Richard  re- 
solved to  avenge  his  cousin's  death  and  complete  the 


THE    PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  487 

work  he  had  begun  by  a  fresh  invasion.  He  felt  no  ap- 
prehension of  danger.  At  home  his  triumph  seemed 
complete.  The  death  of  Norfolk,  the  exile  of  Henry  of 
Lancaster,  left  the  baronage  without  heads  for  any  rising. 
. ' .  ensured,  as  he  believed,  the  loyalty  of  the  great  houses 
i  .he  hostages  of  their  blood  whom  he  carried  with  him, 
at  'vhose  head  was  Henry  of  Lancaster's  son,  the  future 
Henry  the  Fifth.  The  refusal  of  the  Percies,  the  Earl  of 
Northumberland  and  his  son  Henry  Percy  or  Hotspur,  to 
obey  his.  summons  might  have  warned  him  that  danger 
was  brewing  in  the  north.  Richard,  however,  took  little 
heed.  He  banished  the  Percies,  who  withdrew  into  Scot- 
land ;  and  sailed  for  Ireland  at  the  end  of  May,  leaving 
his  uncle  the  Duke  of  York  regent  in  his  stead. 

The  opening  of  his  campaign  was  indecisive,  and  it 
was  not  till  fresh  reinforcements  arrived  at  Dublin  that 
the  King  could  prepare  for  a  march  into  the  heart  of  the 
island.  But  while  he  planned  the  conquest  of  Ireland 
the  news  came  that  England  was  lost.  Little  more  than 
a  month  had  passed  after  his  departure  when  Henry  of 
Lancaster  entered  the  Humber  and  landed  at  Ravenspur. 
He  came,  he  said,  to  claim  his  heritage ;  and  three  of  his 
Yorkshire  castles  at  once  threw  open  their  gates.  The 
two  great  houses  of  the  north  joined  him  at  once.  Ralph 
Neville,  the  Earl  of  Westmoreland,  had  married  his  half- 
sister  ;  the  Percies  came  from  their  exile  over  the  Scottish 
border.  As  he  pushed  quickly  to  the  south  all  resistance 
broke  down.  The  army  which  the  Regent  gathered  re- 
fused to  do  hurt  to  the  Duke  ;  London  called  him  to  her 
gates ;  and  the  royal  Council  could  only  march  hastily 
on  Bristol  in  the  hope  of  securing  that  port  for  the  King's 
return.  But  the  town  at  once  yielded  to  Henry's  sum- 
mons, the  Regent  submitted  to  him,  and  with  an  army 
which  grew  at  every  step  the  Duke  marched  upon  Che- 
shire, where  Richard's  adherents  were  gathering  in  arms 
to  meet  the  King.  Contrary  winds  had  for  a  while  kept 
Richard  ignorant  of  his  cousin's  progress,  and  even  when 
the  news  reached  him  he  was  in  a  web  of  treachery. 
The  Duke  of  Albemarle,  the  son  of  the  Regent  Duke  of 
York,  was  beside  him,  and  at  his  persuasion  the  King 


488  HISTORY   OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

abandoned  his  first  purpose  of  returning  at  once,  and 
sent  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  to  Conway  while  he  himself 
waited  to  gather  his  army  and  fleet.  The  six  days  he 
proposed  to  gather  them  in  became  sixteen,  and  the  delay 
proved  fatal  to  his  cause.  As  no  news  came  of  Richard 
the  Welshmen  who  flocked  to  Salisbury's  camp  dispersed 
on  Henry's  advance  to  Chester.  Henry  was  in  fact 
master  of  the  realm  at  the  opening  of  August,  when 
Richard  at  last  sailed  from  Waterford  and  landed  at  Mil- 
ford  Haven. 

Every  road  was  blocked,  and  the  news  that  all  was 
lost  told  on  the  thirty  thousand  men  he  brought  with 
him.  In  a  single  day  but  six  thousand  remained,  and 
even  these  dispersed  when  it  was  found  that  the  King 
had  ridden  off  disguised  as  a  friar  to  join  the  force  which 
he  believed  to  be  awaiting  him  in  North  Wales  with 
Salisbury  at  its  head.  He  reached  Caernarvon  only  to 
find  this  force  already  disbanded,  and  throwing  himself 
into  the  castle  despatched  his  kinsmen,  the  Dukes  of 
Exeter  and  Surrey,  to  Chester  to  negotiate  with  Henry 
of  Lancaster.  But  they  were  detained  there  while  the 
Earl  of  Northumberland  pushed  forward  with  a  picked 
body  of  men,  and  securing  the  castles  of  the  coast  at 
last  sought  an  interview  with  Richard  at  Conway.  The 
King's  confidence  was  still  unbroken.  He  threatened  to 
raise  a  force  of  Welshmen  and  to  put  Lancaster  to  death. 
Deserted  as  he  was  indeed,  a  King  was  in  himself  a  power, 
and  only  the  treacherous  pledges  of  the  Earl  induced 
him  to  set  aside  his  plans  for  a  reconciliation  to  be 
brought  about  in  Parliament  and  to  move  from  Conway 
on  the  promise  of  a  conference  with  Henry  at  Flint.  But 
he  had  no  sooner  reached  the  town  than  he  found  him- 
self surrounded  by  Lancaster's  forces.  "  I  am  betrayed," 
he  cried,  as  the  view  of  his  enemies  burst  on  him  from 
the  hill ;  "  there  are  pennons  and  banners  in  the  valley." 
But  it  was  too  late  for  retreat.  Richard  was  seized  and 
brought  before  his  cousin.  "  I  am  come  before  my  time," 
said  Lancaster,  "  but  I  will  show  you  the  reason.  Your 
people,  my  lord,  complain  that  for  the  space  of  twenty 
years  you  have  ruled  them  harshly  :  however,  if  it  please 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  489 

God,  I  will  help  you  to  rule  them  better."  "  Pair  cousin," 
replied  the  King,  "  since  it  pleases  you,  it  pleases  me 
well."  Then,  breaking  in  private  into  passionate  regrets 
that  he  had  ever  spared  his  cousin's  life,  he  suffered  him- 
self to  be  carried  a  prisoner  along  the  road  to  London. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   HOUSE   OF   LANCASTER. 

1399—1422. 

ONCE  safe  in  the  Tower,  it  was  easy  to  wrest  from 
Richard  a  resignation  of  his  crown  ;  and  this  resignation 
was  solemnly  accepted  by  the  Parliament  which  met  at 
the  close  of  September  1399.  But  the  resignation  was 
confirmed  by  a  solemn  Act  of  Deposition.  The  corona- 
tion oath  was  read,  and  a  long  impeachment  which  stated 
the  breach  of  the  promises  made  in  it  was  followed  by  a 
solemn  vote  of  both  Houses  which  removed  Richard  from 
the  state  and  authority  of  King.  According  to  the  strict 
rules  of  hereditary  descent  as  construed  by  the  feudal 
lawyers  by  an  assumed  analogy  with  the  rules  which 
governed  descent  of  ordinary  estates,  the  crown  would 
now  have  passed  to  a  house  which  had  at  an  earlier 
period  played  a  leading  part  in  the  revolutions  of  the 
Edwards.  The  great-grandson  of  the  Mortimer  who 
brought  about  the  deposition  of  Edward  the  Secondiiad 
married  the  daughter  and  heiress  of  Lionel  of  Clarence, 
the  third  son  of  Edward  the  Third.  The  childlessness 
of  Richard  and  the  death  of  Edward's  second  son  without 
issue  placed  Edmund  Mortimer,  the  son  of  the  Earl  who 
had  fallen  in  Ireland,  first  among  the  claimants  of  the 
crown  ;  but  he  was  now  a  child  of  six  years  old,  the 
strict  rule  of  hereditary  descent  had  never  received  any 
formal  recognition  in  the  case  of  the  Crown,  and  prece- 
dent suggested  a  right  of  Parliament  to  choose  in  such  a 
case  a  successor  among  any  other  members  of  the  Royal 
House.  Only  one  such  successor  was  in  fact  possible. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  491 

Rising  from  his  seat  and  crossing  himself,  Henry  of  Lan- 
caster solemnly  challenged  the  crown,  "  as  that  I  am 
descended  by  right  line  of  blood  coming  from  the  good 
lord  King  Henry  the  Third,  and  through  that  right  that 
God  of  his  grace  hath  sent  me  with  help  of  my  kin  and 
of  my  friends  to  recover  it :  the  which  realm  was  in  point 
to  be  undone  by  default  of  goverance  and  undoing  of 
good  laws."  Whatever  defects  such  a  claim  might  pre- 
sent were  more  than  covered  by  the  solemn  recognition 
of  Parliament.  The  two  Archbishops,  taking  the  new 
sovereign  by  the  hand,  seated  him  upon  the  throne,  and 
Henry  in  emphatic  words  ratified  the  compact  between 
himself  and  his  people.  "  Sirs,"  he  said  to  the  prelates, 
lords,  knights,  and  burgesses  gathered  round  him,  "  I 
thank  God  and  you,  spiritual  and  temporal,  and  all 
estates  of  the  land ;  and  do  you  to  wit  it  is  not  my  will 
that  any  man  think  that  by  way  of  conquest  I  would  dis- 
inherit any  of  his  heritage,  franchises,  or  other  rights 
that  he  ought  to  have,  nor  put  him  out  of  the  good  that 
he  has  and  has  had  by  the  good  laws  and  customs  of  the 
realm,  except  those  persons  that  have  been  against  the 
good  purpose  and  the  common  profit  of  the  realm." 

The  deposition  of  a  king,  the  setting  aside  of  one 
claimant  and  the  elevation  of  another  to  the  throne, 
marked  the  triumph  of  the  English  Parliament  over  the 
monarchy.  The  struggle  of  the  Edwards  against  its  grad- 
ual advance  had  culminated  in  the  bold  effort  of  Richard 
the  Second  to  supersede  it  by  a  commission  dependent 
on  the  Crown.  But  the  House  of  Lancaster  was  pre- 
cluded by  its  very  position  from  any  renewal  of  the 
struggle.  It  was  not  merely  that  the  exhaustion  of  the 
treasury  by  the  war  and  revolt  which  followed  Henry's 
accession  left  him  even  more  than  the  kings  who  had 
gone  before  in  the  hands  of  the  Estates ;  it  was  that  his 
very  right  to  the  Crown  lay  in  an  acknowledgment  of 
their  highest  pretensions.  He  had  been  raised  to  the 
throne  by  a  Parliamentary  revolution.  His  claim  to 
obedience  had  throughout  to  rest  on  a  Parliamentary 
title.  During  no  period  of  our  early  history,  therefore, 
were  the  powers  of  the  two  Houses  so  frankly  recognized. 


492  HISTORY   OP  THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

The  tone  of  Henry  the  Fourth  till  the  very  close  of  his 
reign  is  that  of  humble  compliance  in  all  but  ecclesiasti- 
cal matters  with  the  prayers  of  the  Parliament,  and  even 
his  imperious  successor  shrank  almost  with  timidity  from 
any  conflict  with  it.  But  the  Crown  had  been  bought 
by  pledges  less  noble  than  this.  Arundel  was  not  only 
the  representative  of  constitutional  rule ;  he  was  also 
the  representative  of  religious  persecution.  No  prelate 
had  been  so  bitter  a  foe  of  the  Lollards,  and  the  support 
which  the  Church  had  given  to  the  recent  revolution 
had  no  doubt  sprung  from  its  belief  that  a  sovereign 
whom  Arundel  placed  on  the  throne  would  deal  pitilessly 
with  the  growing  heresy.  The  expectations  of  the  clergy 
were  soon  realized.  In  the  first  Convocation  of  his  reign 
Henry  declared  himself  the  protector  of  the  Church  and 
ordered  the  prelates  to  take  measures  for  the  suppression 
of  heresy  and  of  the  wandering  preachers.  His  declara- 
tion was  but  a  prelude  to  the  Statute  of  Heresy  which 
was  passed  at  the  opening  of  1401.  By  the  provisions  of 
this  infamous  Act  the  hindrances  which  had  till  now 
neutralized  the  efforts  of  the  bishops  to  enforce  the  com- 
mon law  were  utterly  taken  away.  Not  only  were  they 
permitted  to  arrest  all  preachers  of  heresy,  all  school- 
masters infected  with  heretical  teaching,  all  owners  and 
writers  of  heretical  books,  and  to  imprison  them  even  if 
they  recanted  at  the  King's  pleasure,  but  a  refusal  to  ab- 
jure or  a  relapse  after  abjuration  enabled  them  to  hand 
over  the  heretic  to  the  civil  officers,  and  by  these — so 
ran  the  first  legal  enactment  of  religious  bloodshed  which 
defiled  our  Statute-book — he  was  to  be  burned  on  a  high 
place  before  the  people.  The  statute  was  hardly  passed 
when  William  Sautre  became  its  first  victim.  Sautre. 
while  a  parish  priest  at  Lynn,  had  been  cited  before 
the  Bishop  of  Norwich  two  years  before  for  heresy  and 
forced  to  recant.  But  he  still  continued  to  preach  against 
the  worship  of  images,  against  pilgrimages,  and  against 
transubstantiation  till  the  Statute  of  Heresy  strengthened 
Arundel's  hands.  In  February,  1401,  Sautre  was  brought 
before  the  Primate  as  a  relapsed  heretic,  and  on  refusing 
to  recant  a  second  time  was  degraded  from  his  orders. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  493 

He  was  handed  to  the  secular  power,  and  on  the  issue  of 
a  royal  writ  publicly  burned. 

The  support  of  the  nobles  had  been  partly  won  by  a 
hope  hardly  less  fatal  to  the  peace  of  the  realm,  the  hope 
of  a  renewal  of  the  strife  with  France.  The  peace  of 
Richard's  later  years  had  sprung  not  merely  from  the 
policy  of  the  English  King,  but  from  the  madness  of 
Charles  the  Sixth  of  France.  France  fell  into  the  hands 
of  its  king's  uncle,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  and  as  the 
Duke  was  ruler  of  Flanders  and  peace  with  England  was 
a  necessity  for  Flemish  industry,  his  policy  went  hand 
in  hand  with  that  of  Richard.  His  rival,  the  King's 
brother,  Lewis,  Duke  of  Orleans,  was  the  head  of  the 
French  war-party  ;  and  it  was  with  the  view  of  bringing 
about  war  that  he  supported  Henry  of  Lancaster  in  his 
exile  at  the  French  court.  Burgundy  on  the  other  hand 
listened  to  Richard's  denunciation  of  Henry  as  a  traitor, 
and  strove  to  prevent  his  departure.  But  his  efforts 
were  in  vain,  and  he  had  to  witness  a  revolution  which 
hurled  Richard  from  the  throne,  deprived  Isabella  of  her 
crown,  and  restored  to  power  the  baronial  party  of  which 
Gloucester,  the  advocate  of  war,  had  long  been  the  head. 
The  dread  of  war  was  increased  by  a  pledge  which  Henry 
was  said  to  have  given  at  his  coronation  that  he  would 
not  only  head  an  army  in  its  march  into  France  but  that 
he  would  march  further  into  France  than  ever  his  grand- 
father had  done.  The  French  Court  retorted  by  refusing 
to  acknowledge  Henry  as  King,  while  the  truce  concluded 
with  Richard  came  at  his  death  legally  to  an  end.  In 
spite  of  this  defiance,  however,  Burgundy  remained  true 
to  the  interests  of  Flanders,  and  Henry  clung  to  a  truce 
which  gave  him  time  to  establish  his  throne.  But  the, 
influence  of  the  baronial  party  in  England  made  peace 
hard  to  keep;  the  Duke  of  Orleans  urged  on  France  to 
war  ;  and  the  hatred  of  the  two  peoples  broke  through 
the  policy  of  the  two  governments.  Count  Waleran  of 
St.  Pol,  who  had  married  Richard's  half-sister,  put  out 
to  sea  with  a  fleet  which  swept  the  east  coast  and  entered 
the  Channel.  Pirates  from  Britanny  and  Navarre  soon 
swarmed  jn  the  narrow  seas,  and  their  ravages  were  paid 


494  HISTORY   OF   THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

back  by  those  of  pirates  from  the  Cinque  Ports.  A  more 
formidable  trouble  broke  out  in  the  north.  The  enmity 
of  France  roused  as  of  old  the  enmity  of  Scotland ;  the 
Scotch  King  Robert  the  Third  refused  to  acknowledge 
Henry,  and  Scotch  freebooters  cruised  along  the  northern 
coast. 

Attack  from  without  woke  attack  from  within  the 
realm.  Henry  had  shown  little  taste  for  bloodshed  in 
his  conduct  of  the  revolution.  Save  those  of  the  royal 
councillors  whom  he  found  at  Bristol  no  one  had  been 
put  to  death.  Though  a  deputation  of  lords  with  Arch- 
bishop Arundel  at  its  head  pressed  him  to  take  Richard's 
life,  he  steadily  refused,  and  kept  him  a  prisoner  at 
Pomfret.  The  judgments  against  Gloucester,  Warwick, 
and  Arundel  were  reversed,  but  the  lords  who  had 
appealed  the  Duke  were  only  punished  by  the  loss  of  the 
dignities  which  they  had  received  as  their  reward. 
Richard's  brother  and  nephew  by  the  half-blood,  the 
Dukes  of  Surrey  and  Exeter,  became  again  Earls  of  Kent 
and  Huntingdon.  York's  son,  the  Duke  of  Albemarle, 
sank  once  more  into  Earl  of  Rutland.  Beaufort,  Earl  of 
Somerset,  lost  his  new  Marquisate  of  Dorset ;  Spenser 
lost  his  Earldom  of  Gloucester.  But  in  spite  of  a  stormy 
scene  among  the  lords  in  Parliament  Henry  refused  to 
exact  further  punishment ;  and  his  real  temper  was  seen 
in  a  statute  which  forbade  all  such  appeals  and  left 
treason  to  be  dealt  with  by  ordinary  process  of  law.  But 
the  times  were  too  rough  for  mercy  such  as  this.  Clouds 
no  sooner  gathered  round  the  new  King  than  the  degraded 
lords  leagued  with  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  and  the  deposed 
Bishop  of  Carlisle  to  release  Richard  and  to  murder 
Henry.  Betrayed  by  Rutland  in  the  Spring  of  1401,  and 
threatened  by  the  King's  march  from  London,  they  fled 
to  Cirencester ;  but  the  town  was  against  them,  its 
burghers  killed  Kent  and  Salisbury,  and  drove  out  the 
rest.  A  terrible  retribution  followed.  Lord  Spenser 
and  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  were  taken  and  summarily 
beheaded ;  thirty  more  conspirators  fell  into  the  King's 
hands  to  meet  the  same  fate.  They  drew  with  them  in 
their  doom  the  wretched  prisoner  in  whose  name  they 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461  495 

had  risen.  A  great  council  held  after  the  suppression  of 
the  revolt  prayed  "  that  if  Richard,  the  late  King,  be 
alive,  as  some  suppose  he  is,  it  be  ordained  that  he  be 
well  and  securely  guarded  for  the  safety  of  the  states  of 
the  King  and  kingdom ;  but  if  he  be  dead,  then  that  he 
be  openly  showed  to  the  people  that  they  may  have 
knowledge  thereof."  The  ominous  words  were  soon 
followed  by  news  of  Richard's  death  in  prison.  His 
body  was  brought  to  St.  Paul's,  Henry  himself  with  the 
prince's  of  the  blood  royal  hearing  the  pall :  and  the  face 
was  left  uncovered  to  meet  rumors  that  the  prisoner  had 
been  assassinated  by  his  keeper,  Sir  Piers  Exton. 

In  June  Henry  marched  northward  to  end  the  trouble 
from  the  Scots.  With  their  usual  policy  the  Scottish 
army  under  the  Duke  of  Albany  withdrew  as  the  English 
crossed  the  border,  and  looked  coolly  on  while  Henry 
invested  the  castle  of  Edinburgh.  The  wants  of  his  army 
forced  him  in  fact  to  raise  the  siege ;  but  even  success 
would  have  been  fruitless,  for  he  was  recalled  by  trouble 
nearer  home.  Wales  was  in  full  revolt.  The  country 
had  been  devoted  to  Richard  ;  and  so  notorious  was  its 
disaffection  to  the  new  line  that  when  Henry's  son  knelt 
at  his  father's  feet  to  receive  a  grant  of  the  Principality, 
a  shsewd  bystander  murmured,  "  he  must  conquer  it  if 
he  will  have  it."  The  death  of  the  fallen  King  only 
added  to  the  Welsh  disquiet,  for  in  spite  of  the  public 
exhibition  of  his  body  he  was  believed  to  be  still  alive. 
Some  held  that  he  had  escaped  to  Scotland,  and  an  im- 
postor who  took  his  name  was  long  maintained  at  the 
Scottish  Court.  In  Wales  it  was  believed  that  he  was 
still  a  prisoner  in  Chester  Castle.  But  the  trouble 
would  have  died  away  had  it  not  been  raised  into  revolt 
by  the  energy  of  Owen  Glyndwr  or  Glendower.  Owen 
was  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  last  native  Princes, 
Lleweln-ap-Jorwerth,  and  the  lord  of  considerable  estates 
in  Merioneth.  He  had  been  squire  of  the  body  to 
Richard  the  Second,  and  had  clung  to  him  till  he  was 
seized  at  Flint.  It  was  probably  his  known  aversion 
from  the  revolution  which  had  deposed  his  master  that 
brought  on  him  the  hostility  of  Lord  Grey  of  Ruthin, 


496  HISTORY  OF    THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  stay  of  the  Lancastrian  cause  in  North  Wales ;  and 
the  same  political  ground  may  have  existed  for  the  refusal 
of  the  Parliament  to  listen  to  his  prayer  for  redress  and 
for  the  restoration  of  the  lands  which  Grey  had  seized. 
But  the  refusal  was  embittered  by  words  of  insult ;  when 
the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  warned  them  of  Owen's  power 
the  lords  retorted  that  "  they  care  not  for  barefoot 
knaves."  They  were  soon  to  be  made  to  care.  At  the 
close  of  1400  Owen  rose  in  revolt,  burned  the  town  of 
Ruthin,  and  took  the  title  of  Prince  of  Wales. 

His  action  at  once  changed  the  disaffection  into  a  na- 
tional revolt.  His  raids  on  the  Marches  and  his  capture 
of  Radnor  marked  its  importance,  and  Henry  marched 
against  him  in  the  summer  of  1401.  But  Glyndwr's  post 
at  Corwen  defied  attack,  and  the  pressure  in  the  north 
forced  the  King  to  march  away  into  Scotland.  Henry 
Percy,  who  held  the  castles  of  North  Wales  as  Constable, 
was  left  to  suppress  the  rebellion,  but  Owen  met  Percy's 
arrival  by  the  capture  of  Conway,  and  the  King  was  forced 
to  hurry  fresh  forces  under  his  son  Henry  to  the  west. 
The  boy  was  too  young  as  yet  to  show  the  military  and 
political  ability  which  was  to  find  its  first  field  in  these 
Welsh  campaigns,  and  his  presence  did  little  to  stay  the 
growth  of  revolt.  While  Owen's  lands  were  being  har- 
ried Owen  was  stirring  the  people  of  Caermarthen  into 
rebellion  and  pressing  the  siege  of  Abergavenny ;  nor 
could  the  presence  of  English  troops  save  Shropshire  from 
pillage.  Everywhere  the  Welshmen  rose  for  their 
"  Prince ;  "  the  Bards  declared  his  victories  to  have  been 
foretold  by  Merlin  ;  even  the  Welsh  scholars  at  Oxford 
left  the  University  in  a  body  and  joined  his  standard. 
The  castles  of  Ruthin,  Hawarden,  and  Flint  fell  into  his 
hands,  and  with  his  capture  of  Conway  gave  him  com- 
mand of  North  Wales.  The  arrival  of  help  from  Scotland 
and  the  hope  of  help  from  France  gave  fresh  vigor  to 
Owen's  action,  and  though  Percy  held  his  ground  stub- 
bornly on  the  coast  and  even  recovered  Conway  he  at 
last  threw  up  his  command  in  disgust.  A  fresh  inroad  of 
Henry  on  his  return  from  Scotland  again  failed  to  bring 
Owen  to  battle,  and  the  negotiations  which  he  carried 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  497 

on  during  the  following  winter  were  a  mere  blind  to 
cover  preparations  for  a  new  attack.  So  strong  had 
Glyndwr  become  in  1402  that  in  June  he  was  able  to  face 
an  English  army  in  the  open  field  at  Brynglas  and  to  de- 
feat it  with  a  loss  of  a  thousand  men.  The  King  again 
marched  to  the  border  to  revenge  this  blow.  But  the 
storms  which  met  him  as  he  entered  the  hills,  storms 
which  his  archers  ascribed  to  the  magic  powers  of  Owen, 
ruined  his  army,  and  he  was  forced  to  withdraw  as  of  old. 
A  raid  over  the  northern  border  distracted  the  English 
forces.  A  Scottish  army  entered  England  with  the  im- 
postor who  bore  Richard's  name,  and  though  it  was  ut- 
terly defeated  by  Henry  Percy  in  September  at  Homil- 
don  Hill  the  respite  had  served  Owen  well.  He  sallied 
out  from  the  inaccessible  fastnesses  in  which  he  had  held 
Henry  at  bay  to  win  victories  which  were  followed  by 
the  adhesion  of  all  North  Wales  and  of  great  part  of 
South  Wales  to  his  cause. 

What  gave  life  to  these  attacks  and  conspiracies  was 
the  hostility  of  France.  The  influence  of  the  Duke  of 
Burgundy  was  still  strong  enough  to  prevent  any  formal 
hostilities,  but  the  war  party  was  gaining  more  and  more 
the  ascendant.  Its  head,  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  had 
fanned  the  growing  flame  by  sending  a  formal  defiance  to 
Henry  the  Fourth  as  the  murderers  of  Richard.  French 
knights  were  among  the  prisoners  whom  the  Percies  took 
at  Homildon  Hill ;  and  it  may  have  been  through  their 
intervention  that  the  Percies  themselves  were  now  brought 
into  correspondence  with  the  court  of  France.  No  house 
had  played  a  greater  part  in  the  overthrow  of  Richard,  or 
had  been  more  richly  rewarded  by  the  new  King.  But 
old  grudges  existed  between  the  house  of  Percy  and  the 
house  of  Lancaster.  The  Earl  of  Northumberland  had 
been  at  bitter  variance  with  John  of  Gaunt ;  and  though 
a  common  dread  of  Richard's  enmity  had  thrown  the 
Percies  and  Henry  together  the  new  King  and  his  pow- 
erful subjects  were  soon  parted  again.  Henry  had  ground 
indeed  for  distrust.  The  death  of  Richard  left  the  young 
Mortimer,  Earl  of  March,  next  claimant  in  blood  of  the 
crown,  and  the  King  had  shown  his  sense  of  this  danger 

32 


498  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

by  imprisoning  the  earl  and  his  sisters  in  the  Tower. 
But  this  imprisonment  made  their  uncle,  Sir  Edmund 
Mortimer,  the  representative  of  their  house ;  and  Edmund 
withdrew  to  the  Welsh  Marches,  refusing  to  own  Henry 
for  king.  The  danger  was  averted  by  the  luck  which 
threw  Sir  Edmund  as  a  captive  into  the  hands  of  Owen 
Glyndwr  in  the  battle  of  Brynglas.  It  was  natural  that 
Henry  should  refuse  to  allow  Mortimer's  kinsmen  to  ran- 
som so  formidable  an  enemy ;  but  among  these  kinsmen 
Henry  Percy  ranked  himself  through  his  marriage  with 
Sir  Edmund's  sister,  and  the  refusal  served  as  a  pretext 
for  a  final  breach  with  the  King. 

Percy  had  withdrawn  from  the  Welsh  war  in  wrath  at 
the  inadequate  support  which  Henry  gave  him  ;  and  his 
anger  had  been  increased  by  a  delay  in  repayment  of  the 
sums  spent  by  his  house  in  the  contest  with  Scotland, 
as  well  as  by  the  King's  demand  that  he  should  surrender 
the  Earl  of  Douglas  whom  he  had  taken  prisoner  at 
Homildon  Hill.  He  now  became  the  centre  of  a  great 
conspiracy  to  place  the  Earl  of  March  upon  the  throne. 
His  father,  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  his  uncle, 
Thomas  Percy,  the  Earl  of  Worcester,  joined  in  the  plot. 
Sir  Edmund  Mortimer  negotiated  for  aid  from  Owen 
Glyndwr;  the  Earl  of  Douglas  threw  in  his  fortunes 
with  the  confederates  ;  and  Henry  Percy  himself  crossed 
to  France  and  obtained  promises  of  support.  The  war 
party  had  now  gained  the  upper  hand  at  the  French 
court ;  in  1403  preparations  were  made  to  attack  Calais, 
and  a  Breton  fleet  put  to  sea.  At  the  news  of  its  pres- 
ence in  the  Channel  Henry  Percy  and  the  Earl  of 
Worcester  at  once  rose  in  the  north  and  struck  across 
England  to  join  Owen  Glyndwr  in  Wales,  while  the 
Earl  of  Northumberland  gathered  a  second  army  and 
advanced  more  slowly  to  their  support.  But  Glyndwr 
was  still  busy  with  the  siege  of  Caermarthen,  and  the 
King  by  a  hasty  march  flung  himself  across  the  road  of 
the  Percies  as  they  reached  Shrewsbury.  On  the  twenty- 
third  of  July  a  fight  ended  in  the  defeat  of  the  rebel 
force.  Henry  Percy  was  slain  in  battle,  the  Earl  of 
Worcester  taken  and  beheaded  ;  while  Northumberland. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  499 

who  had  been  delayed  by  an  army  under  his  rival  in  the 
north,  Neville,  Earl  of  Westmoreland,  was  thrown  into 
prison,  and  only  pardoned  on  his  protestations  of  in- 
nocence. The  quick,  hard  blow  did  its  work.  The 
young  Earl  of  March  betrayed  the  plans  of  his  partisans 
to  purchase  pardon.  The  Breton  fleet,  which  had  de- 
feated an  English  fleet  in  the  Channel  and  made  a  descent 
upon  Plymouth,  withdraw  to  its  harbors  ;  and  though 
the  Duke  of  Burgundy  was  on  the  point  of  commencing 
the  siege  of  Calais  the  plans  of  an  attack  on  that  town 
were  no  more  heard  of. 

But  the  difficulty  of  Wales  remained  as  great  as  ever. 
The  discouragement  of  Owen  at  the  failure  of  the  con- 
spiracy of  the  Percies  was  removed  by  the  open  aid  of 
the  French  Court.  In  July,  1404,  the  French  King  in  a 
formal  treaty  owned  Glyndwr  as  Prince  of  Wales,  and 
his  promises  of  aid  gave  fresh  heart  to  the  insurgents. 
What  hampered  Henry's  efforts  most  in  meeting  this 
danger  was  the  want  of  money.  At  the  opening  of  1404 
the  Parliament  grudgingly  gave  a  subsidy  of  a  twentieth, 
but  the  treasury  called  for  fresh  supplies  in  October,  and 
the  wearied  Commons  fell  back  on  their  old  proposal  of 
a  confiscation  of  Church  property.  Under  the  influence 
of  Archbishop  Arundel  the  Lords  succeeded  in  quashing 
the  project,  and  a  new  subsidy  was  voted ;  but  the 
treasury  was  soon  as  empty  as  before.  Treason  was  still 
rife  ;  the  Duke  of  York,  who  had  played  so  conspicuous 
a  part  in  Richard's  day  as  Earl  of  Rutland,  was  sent  for 
a  while  to  the  Tower  on  suspicion  of  complicity  in  an 
attempt  of  his  sister  to  release  the  Earl  of  March;  and 
Glyndwr  remained  unconquerable. 

But  fortune  was  now  beginning  to  turn.  The  danger 
from  Scotland  was  suddenly  removed.  King  Robert  re- 
solved to  send  his  son  James  for  training  to  the  court  of 
France,  but  the  boy  was  driven  to  the  English  coast  by  a 
storm  and  Henry  refused  to  release  him.  Had  the  Scots 
been  friends,  the  King  jested,  they  would  have  sent  James 
to  him  for  education,  as  he  knew  the  French  tongue  quite 
as  well  as  King  Charles.  Robert  died  of  grief  at  the 
news :  and  Scotland  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  brother, 


500  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

the  Duke  of  Albany,  whose  one  aim  was  that  his  nephew 
should  remain  a  prisoner.  James  grew  up  at  the  English 
Court;  and  prisoner  though  he  was,  the  excellence  of  his 
training  was  seen  in  the  poetry  and  intelligence  of  his 
later  life.  But  with  its  King  as  a  hostage  Scotland  uas 
no  longer  to  be  dreaded  as  a  foe.  France  too  was  weak- 
ened at  this  moment ;  for  in  1405  the  long  smouldering 
jealousy  between  the  Dukes  of  Orleans  and  of  Burgundy 
broke  out  at  last  into  open  strife.  The  break  did  little 
indeed  to  check  the  desultory  hostilities  which  were  go- 
ing on.  A  Breton  fleet  made  descents  on  Portland  and 
Dartmouth.  The  Count  of  Armagnac,  the  strongest 
supporter  of  Orleans  and  the  war  party,  led  troops  against 
the  frontier  of  Guienne.  But  the  weakness  of  France 
and  the  exhaustion  of  its  treasury  prevented  any  formal 
denunciation  of  the  truce  or  declaration  of  war.  Though 
Henry  could  spare  not  a  soldier  for  Guienne,  Armagnac 
did  little  hurt.  An  English  fleet  repaid  the  ravages  of 
the  Bretons  by  harrying  the  coast  of  Britanny ;  and  the 
turn  of  French  politics  soon  gave  Frenchmen  too  much 
work  at  home  to  spare  men  for  work  abroad.  At  the 
close  of  1407  the  murder  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans  by  the 
order  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  changed  the  weak  and 
fitful  strife  which  had  been  going  on  into  a  struggle  of 
the  bitterest  hate.  The  Count  of  Armagnac  placed  him- 
self at  the  head  of  the  murdered  duke's  partisans :  and 
in  their  furious  antagonism  Armagnac  and  Burgundian 
alike  sought  aid  from  the  English  King. 

But  the  fortune  which  favored  Henry  elsewhere  was 
still  slow  to  turn  in  the  West.  In  the  opening  of  1405 
the  King's  son,  Henry  Prince  of  Wales,  had  taken  the 
field  against  Glyndwr.  Young  as  he  was  Henry  was 
already  a  tried  soldier.  As  a  boy  of  thirteen  he  had 
headed  an  incursion  into  Scotland  in  the  year  of  his 
father's  accession  to  the  throne.  At  fifteen  he  fought  in 
the  front  of  the  royal  army  in  the  desperate  fight  at 
Shrewsbury.  Slight  and  tall  in  stature  as  he  seemed,  he 
had  outgrown  the  weakness  of  his  earlier  years  and  was 
vigorous  and  swift  of  foot ;  his  manners  were  courteous, 
his  air  grave  and  reserved ;  and  though  wild  tales  ran  of 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  501 

revels  and  riots  among  his  friends,  the  poets  whom  he 
favored  and  Lydgate  whom  he  set  to  translate  "  the  drery 
piteous  tale  of  him  of  Troy  "  saw  in  him  a  youth  "  both 
manful  and  vertuous."  There  was  little  time  indeed  for 
mere  riot  in  a  life  so  busy  as  Henry's,  nor  were  many 
opportunities  for  self-indulgence  to  be  found  in  campaigns 
against  Glyndwr.  What  fitted  the  young  general  of 
seventeen  for  the  thankless  work  in  Wales  was  his  stern, 
immovable  will.  But  fortune  as  yet  had  few  smiles  for 
the  King  in  this  quarter,  and  his  constant  ill-success  con- 
tinued too  wake  fresh  troubles  within  England  itself. 
The  repulse  of  the  young  prince  in  a  spring  campaign  in 
1405  was  at  once  followed  by  a  revolt  in  the  north.  The 
pardon  of  Northumberland  had  left  him  still  a  foe  ;  the 
Earl  of  Nottingham  was  son  of  Henry's  opponent,  the 
banished  Duke  of  Norfolk  ;  Scrope,  Archbishop  of  York, 
was  brother  of  Richard's  counsellor,  the  Earl  of  Wiltshire, 
who  had  been  beheaded  on  the  surrender  of  Bristol. 
Their  rising  in  May  might  have  proved  a  serious  danger 
had  not  the  treachery  of  Ralph  Neville,  the  Earl  of 
Westmoreland,  who  still  remained  steady  to  the  Lancas- 
trian cause,  secured  the  arrest  of  some  of  its  leaders. 
Scropc  and  Lord  Nottingham  were  beheaded,  while  Nor- 
thumberland and  his  partisan  Lord  Bardolf  fled  into 
Scotland  and  from  thence  to  Wales,  Succors  from  France 
stirred  the  King  to  a  renewed  attack  on  Glyndwr  in  No- 
vember ;  but  with  the  same  ill-success.  Storms  and  want 
of  food  wrecked  the  English  army  and  forced  it  to  retreat ; 
a  year  of  rest  raised  Glyndwr  to  new  strength.;  and  when 
the  long  promised  body  of  eight  thousand  Frenchmen 
joined  him  in  1407  he  ventured  even  to  cross  the  border 
and  to  threaten  Worcester,  The  threat  was  a  vain  one 
and  the  Welsh  army  soon  withdrew ;  but  the  insult  gave 
fresh  heart  to  Henry's  foes,  and  in  1408  Northumberland 
c-ind  Bardolf  again  appeared  in  the  north.  Their  over- 
throw at  Bramliam  Moor  put  an  end  to  the  danger  from  the 
Percies  ;  for  Northumberland  and  Bardolf  alike  fell  on 
the  field.  But  Wales  remained  as  defiant  as  ever.  In 
1409  a  body  of  Welshmen  poured  ravaging  into  Shrop- 
shire ;  man)'  of  the  English  towns  had  fallen  into  Glyii- 


602  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

dwr's  hands  ;  and  some  of  the  marcher-lords  made  private 
truces  with  him. 

The  weakness  which  was  produced  by  this  ill-success 
in  the  West  as  well  as  these  constant  battlings  with  dis- 
affection within  the  realm  was  seen  in  the  attitude  of  the 
Lollards.  Lollardry  was  far  from  having  been  crushed 
by  the  Statute  of  Heresy.  The  death  of  the  Earl  of 
Salisbury  in  the  first  of  the  revolts  against  Henry's  throne, 
though  his  gory  head  was  welcomed  into  London  by  a 
procession  of  abbots  and  bishops  who  went  out  singing 
psalms  of  thanksgiving  to  meet  it,  only  transferred  the 
leadership  of  the  party  to  one  of  the  foremost  warriors 
of  the  time,  Sir  John  Oldcastle.  If  we  believe  his  oppo- 
nents, and  we  have  no  information  about  him  save  from 
hostile  sources,  he  was  of  lowly  origin,  and  his  rise  must 
have  been  due  to  his  own  capacity  and  services  to  the 
Crown.  In  his  youth  he  had  listened  to  the  preaching 
of  Wyclif,  and  his  Lollardry — if  we  may  judge  from  its 
tone  in  later  years — was  a  violent  fanaticism.  But  this 
formed  no  obstacle  to  his  rise  in  Richard's  reign ;  his  mar- 
riage with  the  heiress  of  that  house  made  him  Lord  Cob- 
ham  ;  and  the  accession  of  Henry  of  Lancaster,  to  whose 
cause  he  seems  to  have  clung  in  these  younger  days, 
brought  him  fairly  to  the  front.  His  skill  in  arms  found 
recognition  in  his  appointment  as  sheriff  of  Herefordshire 
and  as  castellan  of  Brecknock ;  and  he  was  among  the 
leaders  who  were  chosen  in  later  years  for  service  in 
France.  His  warlike  renown  endeared  him  to  the  King, 
and  Prince  Henry  counted  him  among  the  most  illustrious 
of  his  servants.  The  favor  of  the  royal  house  was  the 
more  notable  that  Oldcastle  was  known  as  "  leader  and 
captain  "  of  the  Lollards.  His  Kentish  castle  of  Cowling 
served  as  the  headquarters  of  the  sect,  and  their  preachers 
were  openl}*-  entertained  at  his  houses  in  London  or  on 
the  Welsh  border.  The  Convocation  of  1413  charged 
him  with  being  "  the  principal  receiver,  favorer,  protector, 
and  defender  of  them  ;  and  that,  especially  in  the  dioceses 
of  London,  Rochester,  and  Hereford,  he  hath  sent  out  the 
said  Lollards  to  preach  ....  and  hath  been  present 
at  their  wicked  sermons,  grievously  punishing  with  threat- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  503 

enings,  terror,  and  the  power  of  the  secular  sword  such 
as  did  withstand  them,  alleging  and  affirming  among  other 
matters  that  we,  the  bishops,  had  no  power  to  make  anv 
such  Constitutions  "  as  the  Provincial  Constitutions  in 
which  they  had  forbidden  the  preaching  of  unlicensed 
preachers.  The  bold  stand  of  Lord  Cobham  drew  fresh 
influence  from  the  sanctity  of  his  life.  Though  the 
clergy  charged  him  with  the  foulest  heresy,  they  owned 
that  he  shrouded  it  "  under  a  veil  of  holiness."  What 
chiefly  moved  their  wrath  was  that  he  "  armed  the  hands 
of  laymen  for  the  spoil  of  the  Church."  The  phrase 
seems  to  hint  that  Oldcastle  was  the  mover  in  the  re- 
peated attempts  of  the  Commons  to  supply  the  needs  of 
the  state  by  a  confiscation  of  Church  property.  In  1404 
they  prayed  that  the  needs  of  the  kingdom  might  be  de- 
frayed by  a  confiscation  of  Church  lands,  and  though  this 
prayer  was  fiercely  met  by  Archbishop  Arundel,  it  was 
renewed  in  1410.  The  Commons  declared  as  before  that 
by  devoting  the  revenues  of  the  prelates  to  the  service  of 
the  state  maintenance  could  be  made  for  fifteen  earls, 
fifteen  hundred  knights,  and  six  thousand  squires,  while  , 
a  hundred  hospitals  might  be  established  for  the  sick  and 
infirm.  Such  proposals  had  been  commonly  made  by  the 
baronial  party  with  which  the  house  of  Lancaster  had  in 
former  days  been  connected,  and  hostile  as  they  were  to 
the  Church  as  an  establishment  they  had  no  necessary 
connexion  with  any  hostility  to  its  doctrines.  But  a 
direct  sympathy  with  Lollardism  was  seen  in  the  further 
proposals  of  the  Commons.  They  prayed  for  the  abolition 
of  episcopal  jurisdiction  over  the  clergy  and  for  a  mitiga- 
tion of  the  Statute  of  Heresy. 

But  formidable  as  the  movement  seemed  it  found  a  for- 
midable opponent.  The  steady  fighting  of  Prince  Henry 
had  at  last  met  the  danger  from  Wales,  and  Glyndwr, 
though  still  unconquered,  saw  district  after  district  sub- 
mit again  to  English  rule.  From  Wales  the  Prince  re- 
turned to  bring  his  will  to  bear  on  England  itself.  It 
was  through  his  strenuous  opposition  that  the  proposals 
of  the  Commons  in  1410  were  rejected  by  the  Lords. 
He  gave  at  the  same  moment  a  more  terrible  proof  of 


504  HISTORY   OF  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

his  loyalty  to  the  Church  in  personally  assisting  at  the 
burning  of  a  layman,  Thomas  Badb}r,  for  a  denial  of 
trausubstantiation.  The  prayers  of  the  sufferer  were 
taken  for  a  recantation,  and  the  Prince  ordered  the  fire 
to  be  plucked  away.  But  when  the  offer  of  life  and  a 
pension  failed  to  break  the  spirit  of  the  Lollard  Henry 
pitilessly  bade  him  be  hurled  back  to  his  doom.  The 
Prince  was  now  the  virtual  ruler  of  the  realm.  His 
father's  earlier  popularity  had  disappeared  amidst  the 
troubles  and  heavy  taxation  of  his  reign.  He  was 
already  a  victim  to  the  attack  of  epilepsy  which  brought 
him  to  the  grave ;  and  in  the  opening  of  1410  the  Parlia- 
ment called  for  the  appointment  of  a  Continual  Council. 
The  Council  was  appointed,  and  the  Prince  placed  at  its 
head.  His  energy  was  soon  seen  in  a  more  active  inter- 
position in  the  affairs  of  France.  So  bitter  had  the 
hatred  grown  between  the  Burgundian  and  Armagnac 
parties  that  both  in  turn  appealed  again  to  England  for 
help.  The  Burgundian  alliance  found  favor  with  the 
Council.  In  August,  1411,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  of- 
fered his  daughter  in  marriage  to  the  Prince  as  the  price 
of  English  aid,  and  four  thousand  men,  with  Lord  Cob- 
ham  among  their  leaders,  were  sent  to  join  his  forces  at 
Paris.  Their  help  enabled  Duke  John  to  bring  his  op- 
ponents to  battle  at  St.  Cloud,  and  to  win  a  decisive  vic- 
tory in  November.  But  already  the  King  was  showing 
himself  impatient  of  the  Council's  control ;  and  the 
Parliament  significantly  prayed  that  "  as  there  had  been 
a  great  murmur  among  your  people  that  you  have  had 
in  your  heart  a  heavy  load  against  some  of  your  lieges 
come  to  this  present  Parliament,"  they  might  be  formally 
declared  to  be  "  faithful  lieges  and  servants."  The 
prayer  was  granted,  but  in  spite  of  the  support  which  the 
Houses  gave  to  the  Prince,  Henry  the  Fourth  was  reso- 
lute to  assert  his  power.  At  the  close  of  1  HI  he  de- 
clared his  will  to  stand  in  as  great  freedom,  prerogative, 
and  franchise  as  any  of  his  predecessors  had  done,  and 
annulled  on  that  ground  the  appointment  of  the  Contin- 
ual Council. 

The  King's  blow  had  been  dealt  at  the  instigation  of 


THE    PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  505 

his  Queen,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  prompted  as  much 
by  a  resolve  to  change  the  outer  policy  which  the  Prince 
had  adopted  as  to  free  himself  from  the  Council.  The 
dismissal  of  the  English  troops  by  John  of  Burgundy 
after  his  victory  at  St.  Cloud  had  irritated  the  English 
Court ;  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans  took  advantage  of  this 
turn  of  feeling  to  offer  Catherine,  the  French  King's 
daughter,  in  marriage  to  the  Prince,  and  to  promise  the 
restoration  of  all  that  England  claimed  in  Guienne  and 
Poitou.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  Prince  and  the 
Duke  of  Burgundy  a  treaty  of  alliance  with  Orleans  was 
signed  on  these  terms  in  May,  1412,  and  a  force  unfier 
the  king's  second  son,  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  disembarked 
at  La  Hogue.  But  the  very  profusion  of  the  Orleanist 
offers  threw  doubt  on  their  sincerity.  The  Duke  was  only 
using  the  English  aid  to  put  a  pressure  on  his  antagonist, 
and  its  landing  in  August  at  once  brought  John  of  Bur- 
gundy to  a  seeming  submission.  While  Clarence  pene- 
trated by  Normandy  and  Maine  into  the  Orleanois  and  a 
second  English  force  sailed  for  Calais,  both  the  French 
parties  joined  in  pledging  their  services  to  King  Charles 
"  against  his  adversary  of  England."  Before  this  union 
Clarence  was  forced  in  November  to  accept  promise  of 
payment  for  his  men  from  the  Duke  of  Orleans  and  to 
fall  back  on  Bordeaux.  The  failure  no  doubt  gave  fresh 
strength  to  Prince  Henry.  In  the  opening  of  1412  he 
had  been  discharged  from  the  Council  and  Clarence  set 
in  his  place  at  its  head  ;  he  had  been  defeated  in  his  at- 
tempts to  renew  the  Burgundian  alliance,  and  had  striven 
in  vain  to  hinder  Clarence  from  sailing.  The  break  grew 
into  an  open  quarrel.  Letters  were  sent  into  various 
counties  refuting  the  charges  of  the  Prince's  detractors, 
and  in  September  Henry  himself  appeared  before  his 
father  with  a  crowd  of  his  friends  and  supporters  de- 
manding the  punishment  of  those  who  accused  him. 
The  charges  made  against  him  were  that  he  sought  to 
bring  about  the  King's  removal  from  the  throne  ;  and 
"  the  great  recourse  of  people  unto  him,  of  which  his 
court  was  at  all  times  more  abundant  than  his  father's," 
gave  color  to  the  accusation.  Henry  the  Fourth  owned 


506  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

his  belief  in  these  charges,  but  promised  to  call  a  Parlia- 
ment for  his  son's  vindication ;  and  the  Parliament  met 
in  the  February  of  1413.  But  a  new  attack  of  epilepsy 
had  weakened  the  King's  strength  ;  and  though  galleys 
were  gathered  for  a  Crusade  which  he  had  vowed  he  was 
too  weak  to  meet  the  Houses  on  their  assembly.  If  we 
may  trust  a  charge  which  was  afterwards  denied,  the 
King's  half-brother,  Bishop  Henry  of  Winchester,  one  of 
the  Beaufort  children  of  John  of  Gaunt,  acting  in  secret 
co-operation  with  the  Prince,  now  brought  the  peers  to 
pray  Henry  to  suffer  his  son  to  be  crowned  in  his  stead. 
The  King's  refusal  was  the  last  act  of  a  dying  man.  Be- 
fore the  end  of  March  he  breathed  his  last  in  the  "  Jeru- 
salem Chamber  "  within  the  Abbot's  house  at  Westmin- 
ster ;  and  the  Prince  obtained  the  Crown  which  he  had 
sought. 

The  removal  of  Archbishop  Arundel  from  the  Chan- 
cellorship, which  was  given  to  Henry  Beaufort  of  Win- 
chester, was  among  the  first  acts  of  Henry  the  Fifth  ;  and 
it  is  probable  that  this  blow  at  the  great  foe  of  the  Lol- 
lards gave  encouragement  to  the  hopes  of  Oldcastle.  He 
seized  the  opportunity  of  the  coronation  in  April  to  press 
his  opinions  on  the  young  King,  though  probably  rather 
with  a  view  to  the  plunder  of  the  Church  than  to  any 
directly  religious  end.  From  the  words  of  the  clerical 
chroniclers  it  is  plain  that  Henry  had  no  mind  as  yet  for 
any  open  strife  with  either  party,  and  that  he  quietly  put 
the  matter  aside.  He  was  in  fact  busy  with  foreign  af- 
fairs. The  Duke  of  Clarence  was  recalled  from  Bor- 
deaux, and  a  new  truce  concluded  with  France.  The 
policy  of  Henry  was  clearly  to  look  on  for  awhile  at  the 
shifting  politics  of  the  distracted  kingdom.  Soon  after 
his  accession  another  revolution  in  Paris  gave  the  charge 
of  the  mad  King  Charles,  and  with  it  the  nominal  govern- 
ment of  the  realm,  to  the  Duke  of  Orleans  ;  and  his 
cause  derived  fresh  strength  from  the  support  of  the 
young  Dauphin,  who  was  afterwards  to  play  so  great  a 
part  in  the  history  of  France  as  Charles  the  Seventh. 
John  of  Burgundy  withdrew  to  Flanders,  and  both 
parties  again  sought  Henry's  aid.  But  his  hands  were 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  507 

tied  as  yet  by  trouble  at  home.  Oldcastle  was  far  from 
having  abandoned  his  projects,  discouraged  as  they  had 
been  by  his  master ;  while  the  suspicions  of  Henry's 
favor  to  the  Lollard  cause  which  could  hardly  fail  to  be 
roused  by  his  favor  to  the  Lollard  leader  only  spurred 
the  bold  spirit  of  Arundel  to  energetic  action.  A 
council  of  bishops  gathered  in  the  summer  to  denounce 
Lollardry  and  at  once  called  on  Henry  to  suffer  Oldcastle 
to  be  brought  to  justice.  The  King  pleaded  for  delay 
in  the  case  of  one  who  was  so  close  a  friend,  and  strove 
personally  to  convince  Lord  Cobham  of  his  errors.  All 
however  was  in  vain,  and  Oldcastle  withdrew  to  his 
castle  of  Cowling,  while  Arundel  summoned  him  before 
his  court  and  convicted  him  as  a  heretic.  His  open  de- 
fiance at  last  forced  the  King  to  act.  In  September  a 
body  of  royal  troops  arrested  Lord  Cobham  and  carried 
him  to  the  Tower;  but  his  life  was  still  spared,  and  after 
a  month's  confinement  his  imprisonment  was  relaxed  on 
his  promise  of  recantation.  Cobham  however  had  now 
resolved  on  open  resistance.  He  broke  from  the  Tower 
in  November,  and  from  his  hiding-place  organized  a  vast 
revolt.  At  the  opening  of  1414  a  secret  order  sum- 
moned the  Lollards  to  assemble  in  St.  Giles's  Fields  out- 
side London.  We  gather,  if  not  the  real  aims  of  the 
rising,  at  least  the  terror  it  caused,  from  Henry's  state- 
ment that  its  purpose  was  "  to  destroy  himself,  his 
brothers,  and  several  of  the  spiritual  and  temporal 
lords  ;  "  from  Cobham's  later  declarations  it  is  probable 
that  the  pretext  of  the  rising  was  to  release  Richard, 
whom  he  asserted  to  be  still  alive,  and  to  set  him  again 
on  the  throne.  But  the  vigilance  of  the  young  King 
prevented  the  junction  of  the  Lollards  within  the  city 
with  their  confederates  without,  and  these  as  they  ap- 
peared at  the  place  of  meeting  were  dispersed  by  the 
royal  troops. 

The  failure  of  the  rising  only  increased  the  rigor  of 
the  law.  Magistrates  were  directed  to  arrest  all  heretics 
and  hand  them  over  to  the  bishops;  a  conviction  of 
heresy  was  made  to  entail  forfeiture  of  blood  and  estate ; 
and  the  execution  of  thirty-nine  prominent  Lollards  as 


508  HISTORY    OF   THE    ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

traitors  pave  terrible  earnest  of  the  King's  resolve  to  sup- 
press their  sect.  Oldcastle  escaped,  and  for  four  years 
longer  strove  to  rouse  revolt  after  revolt.  He  was  at 
last  captured  on  the  Welsh  border  and  burned  as  a 
heretic ;  but  from  the  moment  when  his  attempt  at  re- 
volt was  crushed  in  St.  Giles's  Fields  the  dread  of  Lol- 
lardry  was  broken  and  Henry  was  free  to  take  a  more 
energetic  course  of  policy  on  the  other  side  of  the  sea. 
He  had  already  been  silently  preparing  for  action  by 
conciliatory  measures,  by  restoring  Henry  Percy's  son 
to  the  Earldom  of  Northumberland,  by  the  release  of  the 
Earl  of  March,  and  by  the  solemn  burial  of  Richard  the 
Second  at  Westminster.  The  supression  of  the  Lollard 
revolt  was  followed  by  a  demand  for  the  restoration  of 
the  English  possessions  in  France,  and  by  alliances  and 
preparations  for  war.  Burgundy  stood  aloof  in  a  sullen 
neutrality,  and  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  who  was  now  vir- 
tually ruler  of  the  French  kingdom,  in  vain  proposed 
concession  after  concession.  All  negotiation  indeed 
broke  down  when  Henry  formally  put  forward  his  claim 
on  the  crown  of  France.  No  claim  could  have  been  more 
utterly  baseless,  for  the  Parliamentary  title  by  which  the 
House  of  Lancaster  held  England  could  give  it  no  right 
over  France,  and  the  strict  law  of  hereditary  succession 
which  Edward  asserted  could  be  pleaded,  if  pleaded  at 
all,  only  by  the  House  of  Mortimer.  Not  only  the  claim 
indeed,  but  the  very  nature  of  the  war  itself  was  wholly 
different  from  that  of  Edward  the  Third.  Edward  had 
been  forced  into  the  struggle  against  his  will  by  the 
ceaseless  attacks  of  France,  and  his  claim  of  the  crown 
was  little  but  an  afterthought  to  secure  the  alliance  of 
Flanders.  The  war  of  Henry  on  the  other  hand,  though 
in  form  a  mere  renewal  of  the  earlier  struggle  on  the 
close  of  the  truce  made  by  Richard  the  Second,  was  in 
fact  an  aggression  on  the  part  of  a  nation  tempted  by 
the  helplessness  of  its  opponent  and  galled  by  the  mem- 
ory of  former  defeat.  Its  one  excuse  lay  in  the  attacks 
which  France  for  the  past  fifteen  years  had  directed 
against  the  Lancastrian  throne,  its  encouragement  of 
every  enemy  without  and  of  every  traitor  within. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  509 

Henry  may  fairly  have  regarded  such  a  ceaseless  hostility, 
continued  even  through  years  of  weakness,  as  forcing 
him  in  sheer  self-defence  to  secure  his  realm  against  the 
Aveightier  attack  which  might  be  looked  for,  should 
France  recover  her  strength. 

In  the  summer  of  1415  the  King  prepared  to  sail  from 
Southampton,  when  a  plot  reminded  him  of  the  insecurity 
of  his  throne.  The  Earl  of  March  was  faithful :  but  he 
was  childless,  and  his  claim  would  pass  at  his  death 
through  a  sister  who  had  wedded  the  Earl  of  Cambridge, 
a  son  of  the  Duke  of  York,  to  her  child  Richard,  the 
Duke  who  was  to  play  so  great  a  part  in  the  War  of  the 
Roses.  It  was  to  secure  his  boy's  claims  that  the  Earl 
of  Cambridge  seized  on  the  King's  departure  to  conspire 
with  Lord  Scrope  and  Sir  Thomas  Grey  to  proclaim  the 
Earl  of  March  King.  The  plot  however  was  discovered 
and  the  plotters  beheaded  before  the  King  sailed  in 
August  for  the  Norman  coast.  His  first  exploit  was  the 
capture  of  Harfleur.  Dysentery  made  havoc  in  his  ranks 
during  the  siege,  and  it  was  with  a  mere  handful  of  men 
that  he  resolved  to  insult  the  enemy  by  a  daring  like 
that  of  Edward  upon  Calais.  The  discord  however  on 
which  he  probably  reckoned  for  security  vanished  before 
the  actual  appearance  of  the  invaders  in  the  heart  of 
France ;  and  when  his  weary  and  half-starved  force  suc- 
ceeded in  crossing  the  Somme  it  found  sixty  thousand 
Frenchmen  encampe  d  on  the  field  of  Agiricourt  right 
across  its  line  of  march.  Their  position,  flanked  on 
either  side  by  woods,  but  with  a  front  so  narrow  that 
the  dense  masses  were  drawn  up  thirty  men  deep, 
though  strong  for  purposes  of  defence  was  ill  suited  for 
attack  ;  and  the  French  leaders,  warned  by  the  ex- 
perience of  Cregy  and  Poitiers,  resolved  to  await  the 
English  advance.  Henry  on  the  other  hand  had  no 
choice  between  attack  and  unconditional  surrender.  His 
troops  were  starving,  and  the  way  to  Calais  lay  across 
the  French  army.  But  the  King's  courage  rose  with 
the  peril.  A  knight  in  his  train  wished  that  the  thou- 
sands of  stout  warriors  lying  idle  that  night  in  England 
had  been  standing  in  his  ranks.  Henry  answered  with 


510  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

a  burst  of  scorn.  "  I  would  not  have  a  single  man  more," 
he  replied.  "  If  God  give  us  the  victory,  it  will  be  plain 
we  owe  it  to  His  grace.  If  not,  the  fewer  we  are,  the 
less  loss  for  England."  Starving  and  sick  as  they  were, 
the  handful  of  men  whom  he  led  shared  the  spirit  of 
their  king.  As  the  chill  rainy  night  passed  away  he 
drew  up  his  army  on  the  twenty-fifth  of  October  and 
boldly  gave  battle.  English  archers  bared  their  arms 
and  breasts  to  give  fair  play  to  "  the  crooked  stick  and 
the  grey  goose  wing,"  but  for  which — as  the  rime  ran 
— "  England  were  but  a  fling,"  and  with  a  great  shout 
sprang  forward  to  the  attack.  The  sight  of  their  ad- 
vance roused  the  fiery  pride  of  the  French ;  the  wise 
resolve  of  their  leaders  was  forgotten,  and  the  dense 
mass  of  men-at-arms  plunged  heavily  forward  through 
miry  ground  on  the  English  front.  But  at  the  first  sign 
of  movement  Henry  had  halted  his  line,  and  fixing  in 
the  ground  the  sharpened  stakes  with  which  each  man 
was  furnished  his  archers  poured  their  fatal  arrow  flights 
into  the  hostile  ranks.  The  carnage  was  terrible,  for 
though  the  desperate  charges  of  the  French  knighthood 
at  last  drove  the  English  archers  to  the  neighboring 
woods,  from  the  skirt  of  these  woods  they  were  still  able 
to  pour  their  shot  into  the  enemy's  flanks,  while  Henry 
with  the  men-at-arms  round  him  flung  himself  on  the 
French  line.  In  the  terrible  struggle  which  followed 
the  King  bore  off  the  palm  of  bravery :  he  was  felled 
once  by  a  blow  from  a  French  mace  and  the  crown  of 
his  helmet  was  cleft  by  the  sword  of  the  Duke  of  Alen- 
^on  ;  but  the  enemy  was  at  last  broken,  and  the  defeat 
of  the  main  body  of  the  French  was  followed  by  the 
rout  of  their  reserve.  The  triumph  was  more  complete, 
as  the  odds  were  even  greater,  than  at  Cre9y.  Eleven 
thousand  Frenchmen  lay  dead  on  the  field,  and  more 
than  a  hundred  princes  and  great  lords  were  among 
the  fallen. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  battle  of  Agincourt  was 
small,  for  the  English  army  was  too  exhausted  for  pur- 
suit, and  it  made  its  way  to  Calais  only  to  return  to 
England.  Through  1416  the  war  was  limited  to  a  con- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307—1461.  511 

test  for  the  command  of  the  Channel,  till  the  increasing 
bitterness  of  the  strife  between  the  Burgundians  and 
Armagnacs  and  the  consent  of  John  of  Burgundy  to  con- 
clude an  alliance  encouraged  Henry  to  resume  his  at- 
tempt to  recover  Normandy.  Whatever  may  have  been 
his  aim  in  this  enterprise — whether  it  were,  as  has  been 
suggested,  to  provide  a  refuge  for  his  house,  should  its 
power  be  broken  in  England,  or  simply  to  acquire  a  com- 
mand of  the  seas — the  patience  and  skill  with  which  his 
object  was  accomplished  raise  him  high  in  the  rank  of 
military  leaders.  Disembarking  in  July  1417  with  an 
army  of  forty  thousand  men  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Touque,  he  stormed  Caen,  received  the  surrender  of 
Bayeux,  reduced  AlenQon  and  Falaise,  and  detaching  his 
brother  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  in  the  spring  of  1418  to 
occupy  the  CQtentin  made  himself  master  of  Avranches 
and  Domfront.  With  Lower  Normandy  wholly  in  his 
hands,  he  advanced  upon  Evreux,  captured  Louviers, 
and  seizing  Pont  de  1'Arche,  threw  his  troops  across  the 
Seine.  The  end  of  these  masterly  movements  was  now  re- 
vealed. Rouen  was  at  this  time  the  largest  and  wealthiest 
of  the  towns  of  France ;  its  walls  were  defended  by  a 
powerful  artillery ;  Alan  Blanchard,  a  brave  and  resolute 
patriot,  infused  the  fire  of  his  own  temper  into  the  vast 
population  ;  and  the  garrison,  already  strong,  was  backed 
by  fifteen  thousand  citizens  in  arms.  But  the  genius  of 
Henry  was  more  than  equal  to  the  difficulties  with  which 
he  had  to  deal.  He  had  secured  himself  from  an  attack 
on  his  rear  by  the  reduction  of  Lower  Normandy,  his 
earlier  occupation  of  Harfleur  severed  the  town  from  the 
sea,  and  his  conquest  of  Pont  de  1'Arche  cut  it  off  from 
relief  on  the  side  of  Paris.  Slowly  but  steadily  the  King 
drew  his  lines  of  investment  round  the  doomed  city  ;  a 
flotilla  was  brought  up  from  Harfleur,  a  bridge  of  boats 
thrown  over  the  Seine  above  the  town,  the  deep  trenches 
of  the  besiegers  protected  by  posts,  and  the  desperate 
sallies  of  the  garrison  stubbornly  beaten  back.  For  six 
months  Rouen  held  resolutely  out,  but  famine  told  fast 
on  the  vast  throng  of  country  folk  who  had  taken  refuge 
within  its  walls.  Twelve  thousand  of  these  were  at  last 


512  HISTORY  OF  THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

thrust  out  of  the  city  gates,  hut  the  cold  policy  of  the 
conqueror  refused  them  passage,  and  they  perished  be- 
tween the  trenches  and  the  walls.  In  the  hour  of  their 
agony  women  gave  birth  to  infants,  but  even  the  new- 
born babes  which  were  drawn  up  in  baskets  to  receive 
baptism  were  lowered  again  to  die  on  their  mother's 
breasts.  It  was  little  better  within  the  town  itself.  As 
winter  drew  on  one-half  of  the  population  wasted  away. 
"  War"  said  the  terrible  King,  "  has  three  handmaidens 
ever  waiting  on  her,  Fire,  Blood,  and  Famine,  and  I  have 
chosen  the  meekest  maid  of  the  three."  But  his  demand 
of  unconditional  surrender  nerved  the  citizens  to  a  re- 
solve of  despair ;  they  determined  to  fire  the  city  and 
fling  themselves  in  a  mass  on  the  English  lines  ;  and 
Henry,  fearful  lest  his  prize  should  escape  him  at  the 
last,  was  driven  to  offer  terms.  Those  who  rejected  a 
foreign  yoke  were  suffered  to  leave  the  city,  but  his  ven- 
geance reserved  its  victim  in  Alan  Blanchard,  and  the 
brave  patriot  was  at  Henry's  orders  put  to  death  in  cold 
blood. 

A  few  sieges  completed  the  reduction  of  Normandy. 
The  King's  designs  were  still  limited  to  the  acquisition 
of  the  province  ;  and  pausing  in  his  career  of  conquest, 
he  strove  to  win  its  loyalty  by  a  remission  of  taxation 
and  a  redress  of  grievances,  and  to  seal  its  possession  by 
a  formal  peace  with  the  French  Crown.  The  conferences 
however  which  were  held  for  this  purpose  at  Pontoise  in 
1419  failed  through  the  temporary  reconciliation  of  the 
French  factions,  while  the  length  and  expense  of  the  war 
began  to  rouse  remonstrance  and  discontent  at  home. 
The  King's  difficulties  were  at  their  height  when  the 
assassination  of  John  of  Burgundy  at  Montereau  in  the 
very  presence  of  the  Dauphin  with  whom  he  had  come 
to  hold  conference  rekindled  the  fires  of  civil  strife.  The 
whole  Burgundian  party  with  the  new  Duke  of  Bur- 
gundy, Philip  the  Good,  at  its  head  flung  itself  in  a  wild 
thirst  for  revenge  into  Henry's  hands.  The  mad  King, 
Charles  the  Sixth,  with  his  Queen  and  daughters  were 
in  Philip's  power;  and  in  his  resolve  to  exclude  the 
Dauphin  from  the  throne  the  Duke  stooped  to  buy  Eng- 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  513 

I 

glish  aid  by  giving  Catherine,  the  eldest  of  the  French 
princesses,  in  marriage  to  Henry,  by  conferring  on  him 
the  Regency  during  the  life  of  Charles,  and  recognizing 
his  succession  to  the  crown  at  that  sovereign's  death.  A 
treaty  which  embodied  these  terms  was  solemnly  ratified 
by  Charles  himself  in  a  conference  at  Troyes  in  May 
1420 ;  and  Henry,  who  in  his  new  capacity  of  Regent 
undertook  to  conquer  in  the  name  of  his  father-in-law 
the  territory  held  by  the  Dauphin,  reduced  the  towns 
of  the  Upper  Seine  and  at  Christmas  entered  Paris  in 
triumph  side  by  side  with  the  King.  The  States-General 
of  the  realm  were  solemnly  convened  to  the  capital ;  and 
strange  as  the  provisions  of  the  Treaty  of  Troyes  must 
have  seemed  they  were  confirmed  without  a  murmur. 
Henry  was  formally  recognized  as  the  future  sovereign 
of  France.  A  defeat  of  his  brother  Clarence  at  Bauge* 
in  Anjou  in  the  spring  of  1421  called  him  back  to  the 
war.  His  re-appearance  in  the  field  was  marked  by  the 
capture  of  Dreux,  and  a  repulse  before  Orleans  was  re- 
deemed in  the  summer  of  1422  by  his"  success  in  the  long 
and  obstinate  siege  of  Meaux.  At  no  time  had  the  for- 
tunes of  Henry  reached  a  higher  pitch  than  at  the  mo- 
ment when  he  felt  the  touch  of  death.  In  the  month 
which  followed  the  surrender  of  Meaux  he  fell  ill  at 
Corbeuil ;  the  rapidity  of  his  disease  baffled  the  skill 
of  the  physicians;  and  at  the  close  of  August,  with  a 
strangely  characteristic  regret  that  he  had  not  lived  to 
achieve  the  conquest  of  Jerusalem,  the  great  Conqueror 
passed  away. 

33 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    WARS    OF    THE    ROSES. 

1422-1461. 

AT  the  moment  when  death  so  suddenly  stayed  his 
course  the  greatness  of  Henry  the  Fifth  had  reached  its 
highest  point.  In  England  his  victories  had  hushed  the 
last  murmurs  of  disaffection.  The  death  of  the  Earl  of 
Cambridge,  the  childhood  of  his  son,  removed  all  danger 
from  the  claims  of  the  house  of  York.  The  ruin  of  Lord 
Cobham,  the  formal  condemnation  of  Wyclif 's  doctrines 
in  the  Council  of  Constance,  broke  the  political  and  the 
religious  strength  of  Lollardry.  Henry  had  won  the 
Church  by  his  orthodoxy,  the  nobles  by  his  warlike 
prowess,  the  whole  people  by  his  revival  of  the  glories  of 
Cre9y  and  Poitiers.  In  France  his  cool  policy  had  trans- 
formed him  from  a  foreign  conqueror  into  a  legal  heir  to 
the  Crown.  The  king  was  in  his  hands,  the  Queen  de- 
voted to  his  cause,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  was  his  ally, 
his  title  of  Regent  and  of  successor  to  the  throne  rested 
on  the  formal  recognition  of  the  estates  of  the  realm. 
Although  southern  France  still  clung  to  the  Dauphin, 
the  progress  of  Henry  to  the  very  moment  of  his  death 
promised  a  speedy  mastery  of  the  whole  country.  His 
European  position  was  a  commanding  one.  Lord  of  the 
two  great  western  kingdoms,  he  was  linked  by  close  ties 
of  blood  with  the  royal  lines  of  Portugal  and  Castillo ; 
and  his  restless  activity  showed  itself  in  his  efforts  to 
procure  the  adoption  of  his  brother  John  as  her  successor 
by  the  Queen  of  Naples  and  in  the  marriage  of  a  younger 
brother,  Humphrey,  with  Jacqueline,  the  Countess  of 
Holland  and  Hainault.  Dreams  of  a  vaster  enterprise 

0M) 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  515 

filled  the  soul  of  the  great  conqueror  himself ;  he  loved 
to  read  the  story  of  Godfrey  of  Bouillon  and  cherished 
the  hope  of  a  crusade  which  should  beat  back  the  Otto- 
man and  again  rescue  the  Holy  Land  from  heathen  hands. 
Such  a  crusade  might  still  have  saved  Constantinople, 
and  averted  from  Europe  the  danger  which  threatened 
it  through  the  century  that  followed  the  fall  of  the  im- 
perial city.  Nor  was  the  enterprise  a  dream  in  the  hands 
of  the  cool,  practical  warrior  and  ruler  of  whom  a  con- 
temporary could  say  "  he  transacts  all  his  affairs  himself, 
he  considers  well  before  he  undertakes  them,  he  never 
does  anything  fruitlessly. 

But  the  hopes  of  far  off  conquests  found  a  sudden  close 
in  Henry's  death.  His  son,  Henry  the  Sixth  of  England, 
was  a  child  of  but  nine  months  old  :  and  though  ho  was 
peacefully  recognized  as  King  in  his  English  realm  and 
as  heir  to  the  throne  in  the  realm  of  France,  his  position 
was  a  very  different  one  from  his  father's.  The  death  of 
King  Charles  indeed,  two  months  after  that  of  his  son- 
in-law,  did  little  to  weaken  it ;  and  at  first  nothing 
seemed  lost.  The  Dauphin  at  once  proclaimed  himself 
Charles  the  Seventh  of  France  :  but  Henry  was  owned 
as  Sovereign  over  the  whole  of  the  territory  which  Charles 
had  actually  ruled  ;  and  the  incursions  which  the  parti- 
sans of  Charles,  now  reinforced  by  Lombard  soldiers  from 
the  Milanese  and  by  four  thousand  Scots  under  the  Earl 
of  Douglas,  made  with  fresh  vigor  across  the  Loire  were 
easily  repulsed  by  Duke  John  of  Bedford,  the  late  King's 
brother,  who  had  been  named  in  his  will  Regent  of 
France.  In  genius  for  war  as  in  political  capacity  John 
was  hardly  inferior  to  Henry  himself.  Drawing  closer  his 
alliance  with  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  by  marriage  to  that 
prince's  sister,  and  holding  that  of  Britanny  by  a  patient 
diplomacy,  he  completed  the  conquest  of  Northern 
France,  secured  his  communications  with  Normandy  by 
the  capture  of  Meulan,  and  made  hinself  master  of  the 
line  of  the  Yonne  by  a  victory  near  Auxerre.  In  1424 
the  Constable  of  Buchan  pushed  from  the  Loire  to  the 
very  borders  of  Normandy  to  arrest  his  progress,  and  at- 
tacked the  English  army  at  Verneuil.  But  a  repulse 


?)16  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

hardly  less  disastrous  than  that  of  Agincourt  left  a  third 
of  the  French  knighthood  on  the  field  :  and  the  Regent 
was  preparing  to  cross  the  Loire  for  a  final  struggle  with 
"  the  King  of  Bourges  "  as  the  English  in  mockery  called 
Charles  the  Seventh  when  his  career  of  victory  was 
broken  by  troubles  at  home. 

In  England  the  Lancastrian  throne  was  still  too  newly 
established  to  remain  unshaken  by  the  succession  of  a 
child  of  nine  months  old.  Nor  was  the  younger  brother 
of  Henry  the  Fifth,  Duke  Humphrey  of  Gloucester,  whom 
the  late  King's  will  named  as  Regent  of  the  realm,  a  man 
of  the  same  noble  temper  as  the  Duke  of  Bedford.  In- 
tellectually the  figure  of  Humphrey  is  one  of  extreme  in- 
terest for  he  is  the  first  Englishman  in  whom  we  can 
trace  the  faint  influence  of  that  revival  of  knowledge 
which  was  to  bring  about  the  coming  renascence  of  the 
western  world.  Humphrey  was  not  merely  a  patron  of 
poets  and  men  of  letters,  of  Lydgate  and  William  of 
Worcester  and  Abbot  Whethamstede  of  St.  Alban's,  as 
his  brother  and  other  princes  of  the  day  had  been,  but 
his  patronage  seems  to  have  sprung  from  a  genuine  in- 
terest in  learning  itself.  He  was  a  zealous  collector  of 
books  and  was  able  to  bequeath  to  the  University  of  Ox- 
ford a  library  of  a  hundred  and  thirty  volumes.  A  gift 
of  books  indeed  was  a  passport  to  his  favor,  and  before 
the  title  of  each  volume  he  possessed  the  Duke  wrote 
words  which  expressed  his  love  of  them,  "  moun  bien 
mondain,"  "  my  worldly  goods  !  "  Lydgate  tell  us  how 
"  notwithstanding  his  state  and  dignyte  his  corage  never 
doth  appalle  to  studie  in  books  of  antiquitie."  His 
studies  drew  him  to  the  revival  of  classic  learning  which 
was  becoming  a  passion  across  the  Alps.  One  wandering 
scholar  from  Foiii,  who  took  the  pompous  name  of  Titus 
Livius  and  who  wrote  at  his  request  the  biography  of 
Henry  the  Fifth,  Humphrey  made  his  court  poet  and 
orator.  The  duke  probably  aided  Poggi  Bracciolini  in 
his  search  for  classical  manuscripts  when  he  visited  Eng- 
land in  1420.  Leonardo  Aretino,  one  of  the  scholars  who 
gathered  about  Cosmo  de  Medici,  dedicated  to  him  a 
translation  of  the  Politics  of  Aristotle,  and  when  another 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  517 

Italian  scholar  sent  him  a  fragment  of  a  translation  of 
Plato's  Republic  the  Duke  wrote  to  beg  him  to  send  the 
rest.  But  with  its  love  of  learning  Humphrey  combined 
the  restlessness,  the  immorality,  the  selfish,  boundless 
ambition  which  characterized  the  age  of  the  Renascence. 
His  life  was  sullied  by  sensual  excesses,  his  greed  of 
power  shook  his  nephew's  throne.  So  utterly  was  he 
already  distrusted  that  the  late  King's  nomination  of 
him  as  Regent  was  set  aside  by  the  royal  Council,  and 
he  was  suffered  only  to  preside  at  its  deliberations  with 
the  nominal  title  of  Protector  during  Bedford's  absence. 
The  real  direction  of  affairs  fell  into  the  hands  of  his 
uncle,  Henry  Beaufort,  the  Bishop  of  Winchester,  a  legit- 
imated son  of  John  of  Gaunt  by  his  mistress  Catharine 
Swynford. 

Two  years  of  useless  opposition  disgusted  the  Duke 
with  this  nominal  Protectorship,  and  in  1424  he  left  the 
realm  to  push  his  fortunes  in  the  Netherlands.  Jacque- 
line, the  daughter  and  heiress  of  William,  Count  of  Hol- 
land and  Hainault,  had  originally  wedded  John,  Duke  of 
Brabant ;  but  after  a  few  years  of  strife  she  had  procured 
a  divorce  from  one  of  the  three  claimants  who  now  dis- 
puted the  Papacy,  and  at  the  close  of  Henry  the  Fifth's 
reign  she  had  sought  shelter  in  England.  At  his  brother's 
death  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  avowed  his  marriage  with 
her  and  adopted  her  claims  as  his  own.  To  support  them 
in  arms  however  was  to  alienate  Philip  of  Burgundy,  who 
was  alreadj'  looking  forward  to  the  inheritance  of  his 
childless  nephew,  the  Duke  of  Brabant ;  and  as  the  alli- 
ance with  Burgundy  was  the  main  strength  of  the  English 
cause  in  France,  neither  Bedford,  who  had  shown  his 
sense  of  its  value  by  a  marriage  with  the  Duke's  sister, 
nor  the  English  council  were  Hkely  to  support  measures 
which  would  imperil  or  weaken  it.  Such  considerations 
however  had  little  weight  with  Humphrey ;  and  in  October 
1424  he  set  sail  for  Calais  without  their  knowledge  with 
a  body  of  five  thousand  men.  In  a  few  months  he  suc- 
ceeded in  restoring  Hainault  to  Jacqueline,  and  Philip  at 
once  grew  lukewarm  in  his  adherence  to  the  English 
cause.  Though  Bedford's  efforts  prevented  any  final 


518  HISTORY   OP  THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

break,  the  Duke  withdrew  his  forces  from  France  to  aid 
John  of  Brabant  in  the  recovery  of  Hainault  and  Holland. 
Gloucester  challenged  Philip  to  decide  their  claims  by 
single  combat.  But  the  enterprise  was  abandoned  as 
hastily  as  it  had  been  begun.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester 
was  already  disgusted  with  Jacqueline  and  enamoured  of 
a  lady  in  her  suite,  Eleanor,  the  daughter  of  Lord  Cob- 
ham  ;  and  in  the  summer  of  1425  he  suddenly  returned 
with  her  to  England  and  left  his  wife  to  defend  herself 
as  she  might. 

What  really  called  him  back  was  more  than  his  passion 
for  Eleanor  Cobham  or  the  natural  versatility  of  his  tem- 
per ;  it  was  the  advance  of  a  rival  in  England  to  further 
power  over  the  realm.  This  was  his  uncle,  Henry  Beau- 
fort, Bishop  of  Winchester.  The  Bishop  had  already 
played  a  leading  political  part.  He  was  charged  with 
having  spurred  Henry  the  Fifth  to  the  ambitious  demands 
of  power  which  he  made  during  his  father's  lifetime  ;  he 
became  chancellor  on  his  accession  ;  and  at  his  death  the 
King  left  him  guardian  of  the  person  of  his  boy.  He 
looked  on  Gloucester's  ambition  as  a  danger  to  his  charge, 
withstood  his  recognition  as  Regent,  and  remained  at  the 
head  of  the  Council  that  reduced  his  office  of  Protector 
to  a  name.  The  Duke's  absence  in  Hainault  gave  fresh 
strength  to  his  opponent:  and  the  nomination  of  the 
Bishop  to  the  chancellorship  marked  him  out  as  the  virtual 
ruler  of  the  realm.  On  the  news  of  this  appointment 
Gloucester  hurried  back  to  accept  what  he  looked  on  as 
a  challenge  to  open  strife.  The  Londoners  rose  in  his 
name  to  attack  Beaufort's  palace  in  Southwark,  and  at 
the  close  of  1425  Bedford  had  to  quit  his  work  in  France 
to  appease  the  strife.  In  the  following  year  Gloucester 
laid  a  formal  bill  of  accusation  against  the  Bishop  before 
the  Parliament,  but  its  rejection  forced  him  to  a  show  of 
reconciliation,  and  Bedford  was  able  to  return  to  France. 
Hardly  was  he  gone  however  when  the  quarrel  began 
anew.  Humphrey  found  a  fresh  weapon  against  Beaufort 
in  his  acceptance  of  the  dignity  of  a  Cardinal  and  of  a 
Papal  Legate  in  England ;  and  the  jealousy  which  this 
step  aroused  drove  the  Bishop  to  withdraw  for  a  while 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  519 

from  the  Council  and  to  give  place  to  this  unscrupulous 
opponent. 

Beaufort  possessed  an  administrative  ability,  the  loss 
of  which  was  a  heavy  blow  to  the  struggling  Regent 
over  sea,  where  Humphrey's  restless  ambition  had  al- 
ready paralyzed  Bedford's  efforts.     Much  of  his  strength 
rested  on  his  Burgundian  ally,  and  the  force  of  Burgundy 
was  drawn  to  other  quarters.     Though  Hainault  had 
been  easily  won  back  on  Gloucester's  retreat  and  Jac- 
queline taken  prisoner,  her  escape  from  prison  enabled 
her  to  hold  Holland  for  three  years  against  the  forces  of 
the  Duke  of  Brabant  and  after  his  death  against  those  of 
the   Duke  of  Burgundy  to  whom   he   bequeathed   his 
dominions.     The  political  strife  in  England  itself  was 
still  more  fatal  .in  diverting  the  supplies  of  men  and 
money  which  were  needful  for  a  vigorous  prosecution  of 
the  war.     To  maintain  even  the  handful  of  forces  left  to 
him  Bedford  was  driven  to  have  recourse  to  mere  forays 
which  did  little  but  increase  the  general  misery.     The 
north  of  France  indeed  was  being  fast  reduced  to  a  desert 
by  the  bands  of  marauders  which  traversed  it.   The  hus- 
bandmen fled  for  refuge  to  the  towns  till  these  in  fear  of 
famine  shut  their  gates  against  them.     Then  in  their  de- 
spair they  threw  themselves  into  the  woods  and  became 
brigands  in  their  turn.     So  terrible  was  the  devastation 
that  two  hostile  bodies  of  troops  failed  at  one  time  even 
to  find  one  another  in  the  desolate  Beauce.     Misery  and 
disease  killed  a  hundred  thousand  people  in  Paris  alone. 
At  last  the  cessation  of  the  war  in  Holland  and  the  tem- 
porary lull  of  strife  in  England  enabled  the  Regent  to 
take  up  again  his   long  interrupted  advance  upon  the 
South.     Orleans  was  the  key  to  the  Loire  ;  and  its  re- 
duction would  throw  open  Bourges  where  Charles  held 
his  court.     Bedford's  resources  indeed  were  still  inade- 
quate for  such  a  siege ;  and  though  the  arrival  of  rein- 
forcements from  England  under  the  Earl  of  Salisbury 
enabled  him  to  invest  it  in  October  1428  with  ten  thou- 
sand men,  the  fact  that  so  small  a  force  could  undertake 
the  siege  of  such  a  town  as  Orleans  shows  at  once  the 
exhaustion  of  England  and  the  terror  which  still  hung 


520  HISTORY   OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

over  France.  As  the  siege  went  on  however  even  these 
numbers  were  reduced.  A  new  fit  of  jealousy  on  the 
part  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  brought  about  a  recall 
of  his  soldiers  from  the  siege,  and  after  their  with- 
drawal only  three  thousand  Englishmen  remained  in  the 
trenches.  But  the  long  series  of  English  victories  had 
so  demoralized  the  French  soldiery  that  in  February  1429, 
a  mere  detachment  of  archers  under  Sir  John  Fastolfe 
repulsed  a  whole  army  in  what  was  called  '  the  Battle  of 
the  Herrings,'  from  the  convoy  of  provisions  which  the 
victors  brought  in  triumph  into  the  camp  before  Orleans. 
Though  the  town  swarmed  with  men-at-arms  not  a  single 
sally  was  ventured  on  through  the  six  months'  siege,  and 
Charles  the  Seventh  did  nothing  for  its  aid  but  shut  him- 
self up  in  Chinon  and  weep  helplessly. 

But  the  success  of  this  handful  of  besiegers  rested 
wholly  on  the  spell  of  terror  which  had  been  cast  over 
France,  and  at  this  moment  the  appearance  of  a  peasant 
maiden  broke  the  spell.  Jeanne  Dare  was  the  child  of  a 
laborer  of  Domremy,  a  little  village  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Vaucouleurs  on  the  borders  of  Lorraine  and  Cham- 
pagne. Just  without  the  cottage  where  she  was  born 
began  the  great  woods  of  the  Vosges  where  the  children 
of  Domremy  drank  in  poetry  and  legend  from  fairy  ring 
and  haunted  well,  hung  their  flower  garlands  on  the 
sacred  trees,  and  sang  songs  to  the  "good  people"  who 
might  not  drink  of  the  fountain  because  of  their  sins. 
Jeanne  loved  the  forest ;  its  birds  and  beasts  came  lov- 
ingly to  her  at  her  childish  call.  But  at  home  men  saw 
nothing  in  her  but  "  a  good  girl,  simple  and  pleasant  in 
her  ways,"  spinning  and  sewing  by  her  mother's  side 
while  the  other  girls  went  to  the  fields,  tender  to  the 
poor  and  sick,  fond  of  church,  and  listening  to  the 
church-bell  Avith  a  dreamy  passion  of  delight  which  never 
left  her.  This  quiet  life  was  broken  by  the  storm  of  war 
as  it  at  last  came  home  to  Domremy.  As  the  outcasts 
and  wounded  passed  by  the  little  village  the  young 
peasant  girl  gave  them  her  bed  and  nursed  them  in  their 
sickness.  Her  whole  nature  summed  itself  up  in  one 
absorbing  passion.;  she  "had  pity,"  to  use  the  phrase  for- 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  521 

ever  on  her  lip,  "  on  the  fair  realm  of  France."  As  her 
passion  grew  she  recalled  old  prophecies  that  a  maid 
from  the  Lorraine  border  should  save  the  land ;  she  saw 
visions ;  St.  Michael  appeared  to  her  in  a  flood  of  blind- 
ing light,  and  bade  her  go  to  the  help  of  the  King  and 
restore  to  him  his  realm.  "  Messire,"  answered  the  girl, 
"  I  am  but  a  poor  maiden  ;  I  know  not  how  to  ride  to  the 
wars,  or  to  lead  men-at-arms."  The  archangel  returned 
to  give  her  courage,  and  to  tell  her  of  "  the  pity  "  that 
there  was  in  heaven  for  the  fair  realm  of  France.  The 
girl  wept  and  longed  that  the  angels  who  appeared  to  her 
would  carry  her  away,  but  her  mission  was  clear.  It  was 
in  vain  that  her  father  when  he  heard  her  purpose  swore 
to  drown  her  ere  she  should  go  to  the  field  with  men-at- 
arms.  It  was  in  vain  that  the  priest,  the  wise  people  of 
the  village,  the  captain  of  Vaucouleurs,  doubted  and  re- 
fused to  aid  her.  "  I  must  go  to  the  King,"  persisted  the 
peasant  girl,  "  even  if  I  wear  my  limbs  to  the  very 
knees."  "I  had  far  rather  rest  and  spin  by  my  mother's 
side,"  she  pleaded  with  a  touching  pathos,  "  for  this  is 
no  work  of  my  choosing,  but  I  must  go  and  do  it,  for  my 
Lord  wills  it."  "And  who,"  they  asked,  "is  your  Lord?" 
"He  is  God."  Words  such  as  these  touched  the  rough 
captain  at  last :  he  took  Jeanne  by  the  hand  and  swore 
to  lead  her  to  the  King.  She  reached  Chinon  in  the 
opening  of  March,  but  here  too  she  found  hesitation  and 
doubt.  The  theologians  proved  from  their  books  that 
they  ought  not  to  believe  her.  "  There  is  more  in  God's 
book  than  in  yours,"  Jeanne  answered  simply.  At  last 
Charles  himself  received  her  in  the  midst  of  a  throng  of 
nobles  and  soldiers.  "  Gentle  Dauphin,"  said  the  girl, 
14 my  ame  is  Jeanne  the  Maid.  The  Heavenly  King 
sends  me  to  tell  you  that  you  shall  be  anointed  and 
crowned  in  the  town  of  Rheims,  and  you  shall  be 
lieutenant  of  the  Heavenly  King  who  is  the  King  of 
France." 

Orleans  had  already  been  driven  by  famine  to  offers  of 
surrender  when  Jeanne  appeared  in  the  French  court, 
and  a  force  was  gathering  under  the  Count  of  Dunois  at 
Blois  for  a  final  effort  at  its  relief.  It  was  at  the  head 


522  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

of  this  force  that  Jeanne  placed  herself.  The  girl  was 
in  her  eighteenth  year,  tall,  finely  formed,  with  all  the 
vigor  and  activity  of  her  peasant  rearing,  able  to  stay 
from  dawn  to  nightfall  on  horseback  without  meat  or 
drink.  As  she  mounted  her  charger,  clad  in  white  armor 
from  head  to  foot,  with  a  great  white  banner  studded 
with  fleur-de-lys  waving  over  her  head,  she  seemed  "  a 
thing  wholly  divine,  whether  to  see  or  hear."  The  ten 
thousand  men-at-arms  who  followed  her  from  Blois,  rough 
plunderers  whose  only  prayer  was  that  of  La  Hire,  "  Sire 
Dieu,  I  pray  you  to  do  for  La  Hire  what  La  Hire  would 
do  for  you,  were  you  captain-at-arms  and  he  God,"  left  off 
their  oaths  and  foul  living  at  her  word  and  gathered  round 
the  altars  on  their  march.  Her  shrewd  peasant  humor 
helped  her  to  manage  the  wild  soldiery,  and  her  followers 
laughed  over  their  camp-fires  at  an  old  warrior  who  had 
been  so  puzzled  by  her  prohibition  of  oaths  that  she 
suffered  him  still  to  swear  by  his  b&ton.  For  in  the 
midst  of  her  enthusiasm  her  good  sense  never  left  her.- 
The  people  crowded  round  her  as  she  rode  along,  pray- 
ing  her  to  work  miracles,  and  bringing  crosses  and 
chaplets  to  be  blest  by  her  touch.  "  Touch  them  your 
self,"  she  said  to  an  old  Dame  Margaret ;  "your  touch, 
will  be  just  as  good  as  mine."  But  her  faith  in  her 
mission  remained  as  firm  as  ever.  "  The  Maid  prays 
and  requires  you,"  she  wrote  to  Bedford,  "  to  work  no 
more  distraction  in  France  but  to  come  in  her  company 
to  rescue  the  Holy  Sepulchre  from  the  Turk."  "  I  bring 
you,"  she  told  Dunois  when  he  sallied  out  of  Orleans 
to  meet  her  after  her  two  days'  march  from  Blois,  "  I 
bring  you  the  best  aid  ever  sent  to  any  one,  the  aid  of 
the  King  of  Heaven."  The  besiegers  looked  on  overawed 
as  she  entered  Orleans  and,  riding  round  the  walls  bade 
the  people  shake  off  their  fear  of  the  forts  which  sur- 
rounded them.  Her  enthusiasm  drove  the  hesitating 
generals  to  engage  the  handful  of  besiegers,  and  the 
enormous  disproportion  of  forces  at  once  made  itself 
felt.  Fort  after  fort  was  taken  till  only  the  strongest 
remained,  and  then  the  council  of  war  resolved  to  ad- 
journ  the  attack.  "  You  have  taken  your  counsel," 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  523 

replied  Jeanne,  "  and  I  take  mine."  Placing  herself  at 
the  head  of  the  men-at-arms,  she  ordered  the  gates  to 
be  thrown  open,  and  led  them  against  the  fort.  Few 
as  they  were,  the  English  fought  desperately,  and  the 
Maid,  who  had  fallen  wounded  while  endeavoring  to 
scale  its  walls,  was  borne  into  a  vineyard,  while  Dunois 
sounded  the  retreat.  "  Wait  a  while !  "  the  girl  imperi- 
ously pleaded,  "  eat  and  drink  !  so  soon  as  my  standard 
touches  the  wall  you  shall  enter  the  fort."  It  touched, 
and  the  assailants  burst  in.  On  the  next  day  the  siege 
was  abandoned  and  on  the  eighth  of  May  the  force  which 
had  conducted  it  withdrew  in  good  order  to  the  north. 

In  the  midst  of  her  triumph  Jeanne  still  remained  the 
pure,  tender-hearted  peasant  girl  of  the  Vosges.  Her 
first  visit  as  she  entered  Orleans  was  to  the  great  church, 
and  there,  as  she  knelt  at  mass,  she  wept  in  such  a 
passion  of  devotion  that  "  all  the  people  wept  with  her." 
Her  tears  burst  forth  afresh  at  her  first  sight  of  blood- 
shed and  of  the  corpses  strewn  over  the  battle-field.  She 
grew  frightened  at  her  first  wound,  and  only  threw  off 
the  touch  of  womanly  fear  when  she  heard  the  signal 
for  retreat.  Yet  more  womanly  was  the  purity  with 
which  she  passed  through  the  brutal  warriors  of  a 
mediaeval  camp,  It  was  her  care  for  her  honor  that  led 
her  to  clothe  herself  in  a  soldier's  dress.  She  wept  hot 
tears  when  told  of  the  foul  taunts  of  the  English,  and 
called  passionately  on  God  to  witness  her  chastity. 
u  Yield  thee,  yield  thee,  Glasdale,"  she  cried  to  the 
English  warrior  whose  insults  had  been  foulest  as  he 
fell  wounded  at  her  feet,  "  you  called  me  harlot !  I 
have  great  pity  on  your  soul."  But  all  thought  of  her- 
self was  lost  in  the  thought  of  her  mission.  It  was  in 
vain  that  the  French  generals  strove  to  remain  on  the 
Loire.  Jeanne  was  resolute  to  complete  her  task,  and 
while  the  English  remained  panic-stricken  around  Paris 
she  brought  Charles  to  march  upon  Rheims,  the  old 
crowning-place  of  the  Kings  of  France.  Troyes  and 
Chalons  submitted  as  she  reached  them,  Rheims  drove 
out  the  English  garrison  and  threw  open  her  gates  to 
the  king. 


524  HISTORY  OP   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

With  his  coronation  the  Maid  felt  her  errand  to  be 
over.  "  O  gentle  King,  the  pleasure  of  God  is  done,'' 
she  cried,  as  she  flung  herself  at  the  feet  of  Charles  and 
asked  leave  to  go  home.  "Would  it  were  His  good 
will,"  she  pleaded  with  the  Archbishop  as  he  forced  her 
to  remain,  "  that  I  might  go  and  keep  sheep  once  more 
with  my  sisters  and  my  brothers  :  they  would  be  so  glad 
to  see  me  again  ! "  But  the  policy  of  the  French  Court 
detained  her  while  the  cities  of  the  North  of  France 
opened  their  gates  to  the  newly-consecrated  King.  Bed- 
ford however,  who  had  been  left  without  money  or  men, 
had  now  received  reinforcements.  Excluded  as  Cardinal 
Beaufort  had  been  from  the  Council  by  Gloucester's 
intrigues,  he  poured  his  wealth  without  stint  into  the 
exhausted  treasury  till  his  loans  to  the  Crown  reached 
the  sum  of  half-a-million  ;  and  at  this  crisis  he  unscru- 
pulously diverted  an  army  which  he  had  levied  at  his  own 
cost  for  a  crusade  against  the  Hussites  in  Bohemia  to 
his  nephew's  aid.  The  tide  of  success  turned  again. 
Charles,  after  a  repulse  before  the  walls  of  Paris,  fell 
back  behind  the  Loire;  while  the  towns  on  the  Oise 
submitted  anew  to  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  whose  more 
active  aid  Bedford  had  bought  by  the  cession  of  Cham- 
pagne. In  the  struggle  against  Duke  Philip  Jeanne 
fought  with  her  usual  bravery  but  with  the  fatal  con- 
sciousness that  her  mission  was  at  an  end,  and  during 
the  defence  of  Compidgne  in  the  May  of  1430  she  fell 
into  the  power  of  the  Bastard  of  Vend6me,  to  be  sold 
by  her  captor  into  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy 
and  by  the  Duke  into  the  hands  of  the  English.  To  the 
English  her  triumphs  were  victories  of  sorcery,  and  after 
a  year's  imprisonment  she  was  brought  to  trial  on  a 
charge  of  heresy  before  an  ecclesiastical  court  with  the 
Bishop  of  Beauvais  at  its  head. 

Throughout  the  long  process  which  followed  every  art 
was  used  to  entangle  her  in  her  talk.  But  the  simple 
shrewdness  of  the  peasant  girl  foiled  the  efforts  of  her 
judges.  "Do  you  believe,"  they  asked,  "that  you  are 
in  a  state  of  grace  ?  "  "  If  I  am  not,"  she  replied, ;*  God 
will  put  me  in  it.  If  I  am,  God  will  keep  me  in  it." 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  525 

Her  capture,  they  argued,  showed  that  God  had  forsaken 
her.  "  Since  it  has  pleased  God  that  I  should  be  taken," 
she  answered  meekly,  "it  is  for  the  best."  "Will  you 
submit,"  they  demanded  at  last,  "  to  the  judgment  of 
the  Church  Militant?"  "  I  have  come  to  the  King  of 
France,"  Jeanne  replied,  "  by  commission  from  God  and 
from  the  Church  Triumphant  above :  to  that  Church  I 
submit."  "  I  had  far  rather  die,"  she  ended  passionately, 
"  than  renounce  what  I  have  done  by  my  Lord's  com- 
mand." They  deprived  her  of  mass.  "  Our  Lord  can 
make  me  hear  it  without  your  aid,"  she  said,  weeping. 
"Do  your  voices,"  asked  the  judges,  "forbid  you  to 
submit  to  the  Church  and  the  Pope?"  "Ah,  no!  our 
Lord  first  served."  Sick,  and  deprived  of  all  religious 
aid,  it  was  no  wonder  that  as  the  long  trial  dragged  on 
and  question  followed  question  Jeanne's  firmness  Avavered. 
On  the  charge  of  sorcery  and  diabolical  possession  she 
she  still  appealed  firmly  to  God.  "  I  hold  to  my  Judge," 
she  said,  as  her  earthly  judges  gave  sentence  against  her, 
"to  the  King  of  Heaven  and  Earth.  God  has  always 
been  my  Lord  in  all  that  I  have  done.  The  devil  has 
never  had  power  over  me."  It  was  only  with  a  view  to 
be  delivered  from  the  military  prison  and  transferred  to 
the  prisons  of  the  Church  that  she  consented  to  a  formal 
abjuration  of  heresy.  She  feared  in  fact  among  the 
soldiery  those  outrages  to  her  honor,  to  guard  against 
which  she  had  from  the  first  assumed  the  dress  of  a  man. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  Church  her  dress  was  a  crime  and 
she  abandoned  it ;  but  a  renewed  affront  forced  her  to 
resume  the  one  safeguard  left  her,  and  the  return  to  it 
was  treated  as  a  relapse  into  heresy  which  doomed  her  to 
death.  At  the  close  of  May,  1431,  a  great  pile  was  raised 
in  the  market-place  of  Rouen  where  her  statue  stands 
now.  Even  the  brutal  soldiers  who  snatched  the  hated 
"  witch  "  from  the  hands  of  the  clergy  and  hurried  her  to 
her  doom  were  hushed  as  she  reached  the  stake.  One 
indeed  passed  to  her  a  rough  cross  he  had  made  from  a 
stick  he  held,  and  she  clasped  it  to  her  bosom.  As  her 
eyes  ranged  over  the  city  from  the  lofty  scaffold  she  was 
heard  to  murmur,  "  Oh  Rouen,  Rouen,  I  have  great  fear 


626  HISTORY  OP  THE   ENGLISH  PEOPLE. 

lest  you  suffer  from  my  death."  "  Yes !  my  voices  were 
of  God  !  "  she  suddenly  cried  as  the  last  moment  came  ; 
"  they  have  never  deceived  me ! "  Soon  the  flames 
reached  her,  the  girl's  head  sank  on  her  breast,  there  was 
one  cry  of  "  Jesus  !  " — "  We  are  lost,"  an  English  soldier 
muttered  as  the  crowd  broke  up ;  "  we  have  burned  a 
Saint." 

The  English  cause  was  indeed  irretrievably  lost.  In 
spite  of  a  pompous  coronation  of  the  boy-king  Henry  at 
Paris  at  the  close  of  1431,  Bedford  with  the  cool  wisdom 
of  his  temper  seems  to  have  abandoned  from  this  time  all 
hope  of  permanently  retaining  France  and  to  have  fallen 
back  on  his  brother's  original  plan  of  securing  Normandy. 
Henry's  Court  was  established  for  a  year  at  Rouen,  a  uni- 
versity founded  at  Caen,  and  whatever  rapine  and  disorder 
might  be  permitted  elsewhere,  justice,  good  government, 
and  security  for  trade  were  steadily  maintained  through 
the  favored  provinces.  At  home  Bedford  was  resolutely 
backed  by  Cardinal  Beaufort,  whose  services  to  the  state 
as  well  as  his  real  powers  had  at  last  succeeded  in  out- 
weighing Duke  Humphrey's  opposition  and  in  restoring 
him  to  the  head  of  the  royal  Council.  Beaufort's  diplo- 
matic ability  was  seen  in  the  truces  he  wrung  from  Scot- 
land, and  in  his  personal  efforts  to  prevent  the  impending 
reconciliation  of  the  Duke  of  Burgundy  with  the  French 
King.  But  the  death  of  the  duke's  sister,  who  was  the 
wife  of  Bedford,  severed  the  last  link  which  bound  Philip 
to  the  English  cause.  He  pressed  for  peace  :  and  confer- 
ences for  this  purpose  were  held  at  Arras  in  1435.  Their 
failure  only  served  him  as  a  pretext  for  concluding  a 
formal  treaty  with  Charles ;  and  his  desertion  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  yet  more  fatal  blow  to  the  English  cause  in 
the  death  of  Bedford.  The  loss  of  the  Regent  was  the 
signal  for  the  loss  of  Paris.  In  the  spring  of  1436  the 
city  rose  suddenly  against  its  English  garrison  and  de- 
clared for  King  Charles.  Henry's  dominion  shrank  at 
once  to  Normandy  and  the  outlying  fortresses  of  Picardy 
and  Maine.  But  reduced  as  they  were  to  a  mere  handful, 
and  fronted  by  a  whole  nation  in  arms,  the  English  soldiers 
struggled  on  with  as  desperate  a  bravery  as  in  their  days 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  527 

of  triumph.  Lord  Talbot,  the  most  daring  of  their  leaders, 
forded  the  Somme  with  the  water  up  to  his  chin  to  relieve 
Crotoy,  and  threw  his  men  across  the  Oise  in  the  face  of 
a  French  army  to  relieve  Pontoise. 

Bedford  found  for  the  moment  an  able  and  vigorous 
successor  in  the  Duke  of  York.  Richard  of  York  was 
the  son  of  the  Earl  of  Cambridge  who  had  been  beheaded 
by  Henry  the  Fifth  ;  his  mother  was  Anne,  the  heiress  of 
the  Mortimers  and  of  their  claim  to  the  English  crown 
as  representatives  of  the  third  son  of  Edward  the  Third, 
Lionel  of  Clarence.  It  was  to  assert  this  claim  on  his 
son's  behalf  that  theEarl  embarked  in  the  fatal  plot  which 
cost  him  his  head.  But  his  death  left  Richard  a  mere  boy 
in  the  wardship  of  the  Crown,  and  for  years  to  come  all 
danger  from  his  pretensions  were  at  an  end.  Nor  did  the 
young  Duke  give  any  sign  of  a  desire  to  assert  them  as 
he  grew  to  manhood.  He  appeared  content  with  a  lineage 
and  wealth  which  placed  him  at  the  head  of  the  English 
baronage  ;  for  he  had  inherited  from  his  unc,le  the  Duke- 
dom of  York,  his  wide  possessions  embraced  the  estates 
of  the  families  which  united  in  him,  the  house  of  York,  of 
Clarence,  and  of  Mortimer,  and  his  double  descent  from 
Edward  the  Third,  if  it  did  no  more,  set  him  near  to  the 
Crown.  The  nobles  looked  up  to  him  as  the  head  of  their 
order,  and  his  political  position  recalled  that  of  the  Lan- 
castrian Earls  at  an  earlier  time.  But  the  position  of 
Richard  was  as  yet  that  of  a  faithful  servant  of  the 
Crown  ;  and  as  Regent  of  France  he  displayed  the  abili- 
ties both  of  a  statesman  and  of  a  general,  During  the 
brief  space  of  his  regency  the  tide  of  ill  fortune  was 
stemmed;  and  towns  and  castles  were  recovered  along 
the  border. 

His  recall  after  a  twelvemonth's  success  is  the  first  in- 
dication of  the  jealousy  which  the  ruling  house  felt  of 
triumphs  gained  by  one  who  might  some  day  assert  his 
claim  to  the  throne.  Two  years  later,  in  1440,  the  Duke 
was  restored  to  his  post,  but  it  was  now  too  late  to  do 
more  than  stand  on  the  defensive,  and  all  York's  ability 
was  required  to  preserve  Normandy  and  Maine.  Men 
and  money  alike  came  scantily  from  England — where  the 


M  -  :-  : 
:  ------ 

innmi  jriTurr  -v 

:-_:  .-    -'^sani  :-       J-^r* 


~£i  lie  siatm  m   ^ 
ss«n,  Eiic  in* 
^e  ^mrasBsrracr*™*  of 
ir  7-  MIL  if  ^?i  nig  ftnr 


Z ir'trr-:. 


THE  FASUAMEVZ.     1397— 145L 


In  later  days  Catharine  her  imp  John's  wife,  and  his 
ondcrs  influence  over  Richard  at  the  dose  of  that  King's 
reign  was  shown  in  a  royal  ordinance  x 
those  of  his  children  hj  her  who  had 


Pariiaanent,  whieh  as  it  passed  the  Homes 

in  the  widest  and  SM**  general  tetst*  ;  hotb^are 

this  as  a  statute  Hen  iy  the  Fosxth 

which  left  the  Bcanferis  iflrgitisMft 

regarded  the  inheritance  of  the  crown.    Snchnvral  alter- 

ations  of  statutes  however  had  been  illegal  once  the  tisse 

of  Edward  the  Third;  and  the  Beaufort*  i 

the  foice  of  this  proTssaon- 

Che  fine  of  sweesaon  or  no,  the  £nror  which 

them  aHke  hy  Henrj  the  fifth  and  his  son  drew 

dose  to  the  throne,  and  the  weakness  of  Hcsny  the  Sixth 

left  them  at  thb  moment  the 


optnre  of  Harflear  and  the  rebrfrf Calais.  Btfthe 
hated  for  his  pride  and  aTariee,  and  the  pof«lar  hate  grew 
ac  he  showed  hk  jeaJoosj  of  td«  Doke  of  York.  Loral 
indeed  as  liifnaid  had  moved, 
of  his  b 


reeaHeoV,  and  his  post 


:  : : ;:    ~.  ~T  ~    r: :  ~ 
B!T elaini  to  the  crown; 
he  Third's  fifth  so*  Ac 

^      * -T--  -----  -» 

•    V^l   HBB    CSEUBHEonnBlnm  UH. 

.  V:.i    :7 "::..    :.:-::  I-'-    ::   ^ '.: 
as  the  one  sarvivae.    ft  was  to 


530  HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

The  English  ministers  were  anxious  for  the  close  of  the 
war ;  and  in  the  kinship  between  Margaret  and  King 
Charles  of  France  they  saw  a  chance  of  bringing  it  about. 
A  truce  was  concluded  as  a  prelude  to  a  future  peace, 
and  the  marriage  treaty  paved  the  way  for  it  by  ceding 
not  only  Anjou,  of  which  England  possessed  nothing,  but 
Maine,  the  bulwark  of  Normandy,  to  Duke  Rene*.  For 
his  part  in  this  negotiation  Suffolk  was  raised  to  the  rank 
of  marquis  ;  but  the  terms  of  the  treaty  and  the  delays 
which  still  averted  a  final  peace  gave  new  strength  to 
the  war-party  with  Gloucester  at  its  head,  and  troubles 
were  looked  for  in  the  Parliament  which  met  at  the  open- 
ing of  1447.  The  danger  was  roughly  met.  Gloucester 
was  arrested  as  he  rode  to  Parliament  on  a  charge  of 
secret  conspiracy ;  and  a  few  days  later  he  was  found 
dead  in  his  lodging.  Suspicions  of  minder  were  added 
to  the  hatred  against  Suffolk  ;  and  his  voluntary  submis- 
sion to  an  inquiry  by  the  Council  into  his  conduct  in  the 
marriage  treaty,  which  was  followed  by  his  acquittal  of 
all  blame,  did  little  to  counteract  this.  What  was  yet 
more  fatal  to  Suffolk  was  the  renewal  of  the  war.  In  the 
face  of  the  agitation  against  it  the  English  ministers  had 
never  dared  to  execute  the  provisions  of  the  marriage- 
treaty  ;  and  in  1448  Charles  the  Seventh  sent  an  army  to 
enforce  the  cession  of  Le  Mans.  Its  surrender  averted 
the  struggle  for  a  moment.  But  in  the  spring  of  1449  a 
body  of  English  soldiers  from  Normandy,  mutinous  at 
their  want  of  pay,  crossed  the  border  and  sacked  the  rich 
town  of  Fougeres  in  Brittany.  Edmund  Beaufort,  who 
had  now  succeeded  to  the  dukedom  of  Somerset,  protested 
his  innocence  of  this  breach  of  truce,  but  he  either  could 
not  or  would  not  make  restitution,  and  the  war  was  re- 
newed. From  this  moment  it  was  a  mere  series  of  French 
successes.  In  two  months  half  Normandy  was  in  the 
hands  of  Dunois  ;  Rouen  rose  against  her  feeble  garrison 
and  threw  open  her  gates  to  Charles  ;  and  the  defeat  at 
Fourmigny  of  an  English  force  which  was  sent  to  Somer- 
set's aid  was  a  signal  for  revolt  throughout  the  rest  of 
the  provinces.  The  surrender  of  Cherbourg  in  August, 
1450,  left  Henry  not  a  foot  of  Norman  ground. 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  581 

The  loss  of  Normandy  was  generally  laid  to  the  charge 
of  Somerset.  He  was  charged  with  a  miserly  hoarding 
of  supplies  as  well  as  planning  in  conjunction  with  Suf- 
folk the  fatal  sack  of  Fougeres.  His  incapacity  as  a 
general  added  to  the  resentment  at  his  recall  of  the 
Duke  of  York,  a  recall  which  had  been  marked  as  a  dis- 
grace by  the  despatch  of  Richard  into  an  honorable  ban- 
ishment as  lieutenant  of  Ireland.  But  it  was  this  very 
recall  which  proved  the  most  helpful  to  York.  Had  he 
remained  in  France  he  could  hardly  have j  averted  the 
loss  of  Normandy,  though  he  might  have  delayed  it. 
As  it  was  the  shame  of  its  loss  fell  upon  Somerset,  while 
the  general  hatred  of  the  Beauforts  and  the  growing  con- 
tempt of  the  King  whom  they  ruled  expressed  itself  in 
a  sudden  rush  of  popular  favor  towards  the  man  whom 
his  disgrace  had  marked  out  as  the  object  of  their  ill-will. 
From  this  moment  the  hopes  of  a  better  and  a  stronger 
government  centred  themselves  in  the  Duke  of  York. 
The  news  of  the  French  successes  was  at  once  followed 
by  an  outbreak  of  national  wrath.  Political  ballads  de- 
nounced Suffolk  as  the  ape  with  his  clog  that  had  tied 
Talbot,  the  good  "  dog  "  who  was  longing  to  grip  the 
Frenchmen.  When  the  Bishop  of  Chichester,  who  had 
been  sent  to  pay  the  sailors  at  Portsmouth,  strove  to  put 
off  the  men  with  less  than  their  due,  they  fell  on  him 
and  slew  him.  Suffolk  was  impeached,  and  only  saved 
from  condemnation  by  submitting  himself  to  the  King's 
mercy.  He~  was  sent  into  exile,  but  as  he  crossed  the 
sea  he  was  intercepted  by  a  ship  of  Kentishmen,  be- 
headed, and  his  body  thrown  on  the  sands  at  Dover. 

Kent  was  the  centre  of  the  national  resentment.  It 
was  the  great  manufacturing  district  of  the  day,  seeth- 
ing with  a  busy  population,  and  especially  concerned 
with  the  French  contest  through  the  piracy  of  the  Cinque 
Ports.  Every  house  along  its  coast  showed  some 
spoil  from  the  wars.  Here  more  than  anywhere  the  loss 
of  the  great  province  whose  cliffs  could  be  seen  from  its 
shores  was  felt  as  a  crowning  disgrace,  and  as  we  shall 
see  from  the  after  complaints  of  its  insurgents  political 
wrongs  added  their  fire  to  the  national  shame.  Justice 


U 1 1  h  1 1  li&uttLTeL  - 


^ui     w  : 
Tit?  ma  ira*  nf  rsnrox: 


• 


"mlS 

Odbtft  smnisr  rr 

K.  ABE  awK  Ac 
mnarilf  ac  iitsr  i 


i    ne  anmrs*  nut  -3»  -Ttr-r 
n.  Tiunnir-.  mic. 

~fits3isE2~Ti& 


:n 


534  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  time.  The  "  Complaint "  indeed  had  only  been  re- 
ceived to  be  laid  aside.  No  attempt  was  made  to  redress 
the  grievances  which  it  stated  or  to  reform  the  govern- 
ment. On  the  contrary,  the  main  object  of  popular  hate, 
the  Duke  of  Somerset,  was  at  once  recalled  from  Normandy 
to  take  his  place  at  the  head  of  the  royal  Council.  York, 
on  the  other  hand,  whose  recall  had  been  pressed  in  the 
"  Complaint,"  was  looked  upon  as  an  open  foe.  "  Strange 
language,"  indeed,  had  long  before  the  Kentish  rising  been 
uttered  about  the  Duke.  Men  had  threatened  that  he 
"  should  be  fetched  with  many  thousands,"  and  the  expec- 
tation of  his  coming  to  reform  the  government  became  so 
general  that  orders  were  given  to  close  the  western  ports 
against  his  landing.  If  we  believe  the  Duke  himself,  he 
was  forced  to  move  at  last  by  efforts  to  indict  him  as  a 
traitor  in  Ireland  itself.  Crossing  at  Michaelmas  to  Wales 
in  spite  of  the  efforts  to  arrest  him,  he  gathered  four 
thousand  men  on  his  estates  and  marched  upon  London. 
No  serious  effort  was  made  to  prevent  his  approach  to  the 
King ;  and  Henry  found  himself  helpless  to  resist  his 
demand  of  a  Parliament  and  of  the  admission  of  new 
councillors  to  the  royal  council-board.  Parliament  met  in 
November,  and  a  bitter  strife  between  York  and  Somerset 
ended  in  the  arrest  of  the  latter.  A  demand  which  at 
once  followed  shows  the  importance  of  his  fall.  Henry 
the  Sixth  still  remained  childless ;  and  Young,  a  member 
for  Bristol,  proposed  in  the  Commons  that  the  Duke  of 
York  should  be  declared  heir  to  the  throne.  But  the  blow 
was  averted  by  repeated  prorogations,  and  Henry's  sym- 
pathies were  shown  by  the  committal  of  Young  to  the 
Tower,  by  the  release  of  Somerset,  and  by  his  promotion 
to  the  captaincy  of  Calais,  the  most  important  military 
post  under  the  Crown.  The  Commons  indeed  still  re- 
mained resolute.  When  they  again  met  in  the  summer  of 
1451  they  called  for  the  removal  of  Somerset  and  his  crea- 
tures from  the  King's  presence.  But  Henry  evaded  the 
demand  ;  and  the  dissolution  of  the  House  announced  the 
royal  resolve  to  govern  iii  defiance  of  the  national  will. 

The  contest  between  the  House  and  the  Crown  had 
cost  England  her  last  possessions  across  the  Channel.     As 


THE   PARLIAMENT.       1307 — 1461.  585 

York  inarched  upon  London  Charles  closed  on  the  frag- 
ment of  the  duchy  of  Guienne  which  still  remained  to  the 
descendants  of  Eleanor.  In  a  few  months  all  was  won. 
Bourg  and  Blaye  surrendered  in  the  spring  of  1451, 
Bordeaux  in  the  summer ;  two  months  later  the  loss  of 
Bayonne  ended  the  war  in  the  south.  Of  all  the  English 
possessions  in  France  only  Calais  remained ;  and  in  1452 
Calais  was  threatened  with  attack.  The  news  of  this 
crowning  danger  again  called  York  to  the  front.  On  the 
declaration  of  Henry's  will  to  resist  all  change  in  the 
government  the  Duke  had  retired  to  his  castle  of  Ludlow, 
arresting  the  whispers  of  his  enemies  with  a  solemn  pro- 
test that  he  was  true  liegeman  to  the  King.  But  after 
events  show  that  he  was  planning  a  more  decisive  course 
of  action  than  that  which  had  broken  down  with  the  disso- 
lution of  the  Parliament,  and  the  news  of  the  approaching 
siege  gave  ground  for  taking  such  a  course  at  once. 
Somerset  had  been  appointed  Captain  of  Calais,  and  as 
his  incapacity  had  lost  England  Normandy,  it  would  cost 
her — so  England  believed — her  last  fortress  in  France. 
It  was  said  indeed  that  the  Duke  was  negotiating  with 
Burgundy  for  its  surrender.  In  the  spring  of  1452,  there- 
fore, York  again  marched  on  London,  but  this  time  with  a 
large  body  of  ordnance  and  an  army  which  the  arrival  of 
reinforcements  under  Lord  Cobham  and  the  Earl  of 
Devonshire  raised  to  over  twenty  thousand  men.  Elud- 
ing the  host  which  gathered  round  the  King  and  Somerset 
he  passed  by  the  capital,  whose  gates  had  been  closed  by 
Henry's  orders,  and  entering  Kent  took  post  at  Dartford. 
His  army  was  soon  fronted  by  the  superior  force  of  the 
King,  but  the  interposition  of  the  more  moderate  lords  of 
the  Council  averted  open  conflict.  Henry  promised  that 
Somerset  should  be  put  on  his  trial  on  the  charges 
advanced  by  the  Duke,  and  York  on  this  pledge  disbanded 
his  men.  But  the  pledge  was  at  once  broken,  Somerset 
remained  in  power.  York  found  himself  practically  a 
prisoner,  and  only  won  his  release  by  an  oath  to  refrain 
from  further  "  routs  "  or  assemblies. 

Two  such  decisive  failures  seemed  for  the  time  to  have 
utterly  broken  Richard's  power.   Weakened  as  the  crown 


536  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

had  been  by  losses  abroad,  it  was  clearly  strong  enough 
as  yet  to  hold  its  own  against  the  chief  of  the  baronage. 
A  general  amnesty  indeed  sheltered  York's  adherents 
and  enabled  the  Duke  himself  to  retire  safely  to  Ludlow, 
but  for  more  than  a  year  his  rival  Somerset  wielded 
without  opposition  the  power  Richard  had  striven  to 
wrest  from  him.  A  favorable  turn  in  the  progress  of  the 
war  gave  fresh  vigor  to  the  Government.  The  French 
forces  were  abruptly  called  from  their  march  against  Calais 
to  the  recovery  of  the  south.  The  towns  of  Guienne  had 
opened  their  gates  to  Charles  on  his  pledge  to  respect  their 
franchises,  but  the  need  of  the  French  treasury  was  too 
great  to  respect  the  royal  word,  and  heavy  taxation  turned 
the  Hopes  of  Gascony  to  its  old  masters.  On  the  landing 
of  an  English  force  under  Talbot,  Earl  of  Shrewsbury,  a 
general  revolt  restored  to  the-  English  their  possessions 
on  the  Garonne.  Somerset  used  this  break  of  better  for- 
tune to  obtain  heavy  subsidies  from  Parliament  in  1453  ; 
but  ere  the  twenty  thousand  men  whose  levy  was  voted 
could  cross  the  Channel  a  terrible  blow  had  again  ruined 
the  English  cause.  In  a  march  to  relieve  Castillon  on  the 
Dordogne,  Shrewsbury  suddenly  found  himself  face  to  face 
with  the  whole  French  army.  His  men  were  mown  down 
by  its  guns,  and  the  Earl  himself  left  dead  on  the  field. 
His  fall  was  the  signal  for  a  general  submission.  Town 
after  town  again  threw  open  its  gates  to  Charles,  and 
Bordeaux  capitulated  in  October. 

The  final  loss  of  Gascony  fell  upon  England  at  a  moment 
when  two  events  at  home  changed  the  whole  face  of 
affairs.  After  eight  years  of  childlessness  the  King 
became  in  October  the  father  of  a  son.  With  the  birth 
of  this  boy  the  rivalry  of  York  and  the  Beauforts  for  the 
right  of  succession  ceased  to  be  the  mainspring  of  English 
politics ;  and  the  crown  seemed  again  to  rise  out  of  the 
turmoil  of  warring  factions.  But  with  the  birth  of  the 
son  came  the  madness  of  the  father.  Henry  the  Sixth 
sank  into  a  state  of  idiotcy  which  made  his  rule  impos- 
sible, and  his  ministers  were  forced  to  call  a  great  council 
of  peers  to  devise  means  for  the  government  of  the  realm. 
York  took  his  seat  at  this  council,  and  the  mood  of  the 


THE   PARLIAMENT.      1807 — 1461.  587 

nobles  was  seen  in  the  charges  of  misgovernraent  which 
were  at  once  made  against  Somerset  and  in  his  committal 
to  the  Tower.  But  Somerset  was  no  longer  at  the  head 
of  the  royal  party.  With  the  birth  of  her  son  the  Queen, 
Margaret  of  Anjou,  came  to  the  front.  Her  restless 
despotic  temper  was  quickened  to  action  by  the  dangers 
which  she  saw  threatening  her  boy's  heritage  of  the 
crown  ;  and  the  demand  to  be  invested  with  the  full  royal 
power  which  she  made  after  a  vain  effort  to  rouse  her 
husband  from  his  lethargy  aimed  directly  at  the  exclusion 
of  the  Duke  of  York.  The  demand  however  was  roughly 
set  aside  ;  the  Lords  gave  permission  to  York  to  summon 
a  Parliament  as  the  King's  lieutenant ;  and  on  the  assembly 
of  the  Houses  in  the  spring  of  1454,  as  the  mental  aliena- 
tion of  the  King  continued,  the  Lords  chose  Richard  Pro- 
tector of  the  Realm.  With  Somerset  in  prison  little 
opposition  could  be  made  to  the  Protectorate,  and  that 
little  was  soon  put  down.  But  the  nation  had  hardly 
time  to  feel  the  guidance  of  Richard's  steady  hand  when 
it  was  removed.  At  the  opening  of  1455  the  King 
recovered  his  senses,  and  York's  Protectorate  came  at 
once  to  an  end. 

Henry  had  no  sooner  grasped  power  again  than  he  fell 
back  on  his  old  policy.  The  Queen  became  his  chief  ad- 
viser. The  Duke  of  Somerset  was  released  from  the  tower 
and  owned  by  Henry  in  formal  court  as  his  true  and  faith- 
ful liegeman.  York,  on  the  other  hand,  was  deprived  of 
the  government  of  Calais,  and  summoned  with  his  friends 
to  a  council  at  Leicester,  whose  object  was  to  provide  for 
the  surety  of  the  king's  person.  Prominent  among  these 
friends  were  two  Earls  of  the  house  of  Neville.  We  have 
seen  how  great  a  part  the  Nevilles  played  after  the  accession 
of  the  house  of  Lancaster  ;  it  was  mainly  to  their  efforts 
that  Henry  the  Fourth  owed  the  overthrow  of  the  Percies, 
their  rivals  in  the  mastery  of  the  north ;  and  from  that 
moment  their  wealth  and  power  had  been  steadily  growing. 
Richard  Neville,  Earl  of  Salisbury,  was  one  of  the  mighti- 
est barons  of  the  realm  ;  but  his  power  was  all  but  equalled 
by  that  of  his  son,  a  second  Richard,  who  had  won  the 
Earldom  of  Warwick  by  his  marriage  with  the  heiress  of 


588  HISTORY  OP  THE  ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

the  Beauchamps.  The  marriage  of  York  to  Salisbury's 
sister,  Cecily  Neville,  had  bound  both  the  earls  to  his 
cause,  and  under  his  Protectorate  Salisbury  had  been 
created  Chancellor.  But  he  was  stripped  of  this  office  on 
the  Duke's  fall ;  and  their  summons  to  the  council  of 
Leicester  was  held  by  the  Nevilles  to  threaten  ruin  to 
themselves  as  to  York.  The  three  nobles  at  once  took 
arms  to  secure,  as  they  alleged,  safe  access  to  the  King's 
person.  Henry  at  the  news  of  their  approach  mustered 
two  thousand  men,  and  with  Somerset,  the  Earl  of  North- 
umberland, and  other  nobles  in  his  train,  advanced  to 
St.  Albans. 

On  the  23d  of  May  York  and  the  two  Earls  encamped 
without  the  town,  and  called  on  Henry  **  to  deliver  such 
as  we  will  accuse,  and  they  to  have  like  as  they  have 
deserved  and  done."  The  King's  reply  was  as  bold  as 
the  demand.  M  Rather  than  they  shall  have  any  lord 
here  with  me  at  this  time,"  he  replied,  "  I  shall  this  day 
for  their  sake  and  in  this  quarrel  myself  live  and  die." 
A  summons  to  disperse  as  traitors  left  York  and  his  fellow 
nobles  no  hope  but  in  an  attack.  At  eventide  three 
assaults  were  made  on  the  town.  Warwick  was  the  first 
to  break  in,  and  the  sound  of  his  trumpets  in  the  streets 
turned  the  fight  into  a  rout.  Death  had  answered  the 
prayer  which  Henry  rejected,  for  the  Duke  of  Somerset 
with  Lord  Clifford  and  the  Earl  of  Northumberland  were 
among  the  fallen.  The  King  himself  fell  into  the  victor's 
hands.  The  three  lords  kneeling  before  him  prayed  him 
to  take  them  for  his  true  liegemen,  and  then  rode  by  his  side 
in  triumph  into  London,  where  a  parliament  was  at  once 
summoned  which  confirmed  the  acts  of  the  Duke  ;  and 
on  a  return  of  the  King's  malady  again  nominated  York 
as  Protector.  But  in  the  spring  of  1456  Henry's  recovery 
again  ended  the  Duke's  rule ;  and  for  two  years  the  war- 
ring parties  sullenly  watched  one  another.  A  temporary 
reconciliation  between  them  was  brought  about  by  the 
misery  of  the  realm,  but  an  attempt  of  the  Queen  to  arrest 
the  Nevilles  in  1458  caused  a  fresh  outbreak  of  war. 
Salisbury  defeated  Lord  Audley  in  a  fight  at  Bloreheath, 
in  Staffordshire,  and  York  with  the  two  Earls  raised  his 


THE    PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  589 

standard  at  Ludlow.  But  the  crown  was  still  stronger 
than  any  force  of  the  baronage.  The  King  marched 
rapidly  on  the  insurgents,  and  a  decisive  battle  was  only 
averted  by  the  desertion  of  a  part  of  the  Yorkist  army 
and  th  edisbanding  of  the  rest.  The  Duke  himself  fled 
to  Ireland,  the  Earls  to  Calais,  while  the  Queen,  summon- 
ing a  Parliament  at  Coventry  in  November,  pressed  on 
their  attainder.  But  the  check,  whatever  its  cause,  had 
been  merely  a  temporary  one.  York  and  Warwick  planned 
a  fresh  attempt  from  their  secure  retreats  in  Ireland  and 
Calais  ;  and  in  the  midsummer  of  1460  the  Earls  of  Salis- 
bury and  Warwick,  with  Richard's  son  Edward,  the 
young  Earl  of  March,  again  landed  in  Kent.  Backed  by 
a  general  rising  of  the  country  they  entered  London 
amidst  the  acclamations  of  its  citizens.  The  royal  army 
was  defeated  in  a  hard-fought  action  at  Northampton  in 
July.  Margaret  fled  to  Scotland,  and  Henry  was  left  a 
prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  York. 

The  position  of  York  as  heir  presumptive  to  the  crown 
by  his  descent  from  Edmund  of  Langley  had  ceased  with 
the  birth  of  a  son  to  Henry  the  Sixth :  but  the  victory  of 
Northampton  no  sooner  raised  him  to  the  supreme  con- 
trol of  affairs  than  he  ventured  to  assert  the  far  more  dan- 
gerous claims  which  he  had  secretly  cherished  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  Lionel  of  Clarence,  and  to  their  conscious- 
ness of  which  was  owing  the  hostility  of  Henry  and  his 
Queen.  Such  a  claim  was  in  direct  opposition  to  that 
power  of:  the  two  Houses  whose  growth  had  been  the 
work  of  the  past  hundred  years.  There  was  no  constitu- 
tional ground  for  any  limitation  of  the  right  of  Parliament 
to  set  aside  an  elder  branch  in  favor  of  a  younger,  and  in 
the  Parliamentary  Act  which  placed  the  House  of  Lan- 
caster on  the  throne  the  claim  of  the  House  of  Mortimer 
had  been  deliberately  set  aside.  Possession,  too,  told 
against  the  Yorkist  pretensions.  To  modern  minds  the 
best  reply  to  Richard's  claim  lay  in  the  words  used  at  a  later 
time  by  Henry  himself.  "  My  father  was  King  ;  his  father 
also  was  King  ;  I  myself  have  worn  the  crown  forty  years 
from  my  cradle  ;  you  have  all  sworn  fealty  to  me  as  your 
sovereign,  and  your  fathers  have  done  the  like  to  mine. 


540  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH   PEOPLE. 

How  then  can  my  right  be  disputed?"  Long  and  undis- 
turbed possession  as  well  as  a  distinctly  legal  title  by  free 
vote  of  Parliament  was  in  favor  01  the  House  of  Lancaster. 
But  the  persecution  of  the  Lollards,  the  interference  with 
elections,  the  odium  of  the  war,  the  shame  of  the  long 
misgovernment,  told  fatally  against  the  weak  and  imbecile 
King  whose  reign  had  been  a  long  battle  of  contending 
factions.  That  the  misrule  had  been  serious  was  shown  by 
the  attitude  of  the  commercial  class.  It  was  the  rising  of 
Kent,  the  great  manufacturing  district  of  the  realm,  which 
brought  about  the  victory  of  Northampton.  Through- 
out the  struggle  which  followed  London  and  the  great 
merchant  towns  were  steady  for  the  House  of  York. 
Zeal  for  the  Lancastrian  cause  was  found  only  in  Wales, 
in  northern  England,  and  in  the  south-western  shires. 
It  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  shrewd  traders  of  Cheap- 
side  were  moved  by  an  abstract  question  of  hereditary 
right,  or  that  the  wild  Welshmen  believed  themselves  to 
be  supporting  the  right  of  Parliament  to  regulate  the 
succession.  But  it  marks  the  power  which  Parliament 
had  gained  that,  directly  as  his  claims  ran  in  the  teeth  of 
a  succession  established  by  it,  the  Duke  of  York  felt  him- 
self compelled  to  convene  the  two  Houses  in  October,  and 
to  lay  his  claim  before  the  Lords  as  a  petition  of  right. 
Neither  oaths  nor  the  numerous  Acts  which  had  settled 
and  confirmed  the  right  to  the  crown  in  the  House  of 
Lancaster  could  destroy,  he  pleaded,  his  hereditary  claim. 
The  bulk  of  the  Lords  refrained  from  attendance,  and  those 
who  were  present  received  the  petition  with  hardly  con- 
cealed reluctance.  They  solved  the  question,  as  they 
hoped,  by  a  compromise.  They  refused  to  dethrone  the 
King,  but  they  had  sworn  no  fealty  to  his  child,  and  at 
Henry's  death  they  agreed  to  receive  the  Duke  as  suc- 
cessor to  the  crown. 

But  the  open  display  of  York's  pretensions  at  once 
united  the  partisans  of  the  royal  House  in  a  vigorous 
resistance  ;  and  the  deadly  struggle  which  received  the 
name  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  from  the  white  rose  which 
formed  the  badge  of  the  House  of  York  and  the  red  rose 
which  was  the  cognizance  of  the  House  of  Lancaster  be- 


•eeris  History 


THE  WARS 

of  the 

**•          ROSES 


THE  PARLIAMENT.      1307 — 1461.  541 

gan  in  a  gathering  of  the  North  round  Lord  Clifford  and 
of  the  West  round  Henry,  Duke  of  Somerset,  the  son  of 
the  Duke  who  had  fallen  at  St.  Albans.  York,  who 
hurried  in  December  to  meet  the  first  with  a  far  inferior 
force,  was  defeated  and  slain  atWakefiekl.  The  passion 
of  civil  war  broke  fiercely  out  on  the  field.  The  Earl  of 
Salisbury  who  had  been  taken  prisoner  was  hurried  to 
the  block.  The  head  of  Duke  Richard,  crowned  in 
mockery  with  a  diadem  of  paper,  is  said  to  have  been  im- 
paled on  the  walls  of  York.  His  second  son,  Lord  Rut- 
land, fell  crying  for  mercy  on  his  knees  before  Clifford. 
But  Clifford's  father  had  been  the  first  to  fall  in  the  bat- 
tle of  St  Albans  which  opened  the  struggle.  "As  your 
father  killed  mine,"  cried  the  savage  Baron,  while  he 
plunged  his  dagger  in  the  young  noble's  breast,  "  I  will 
kill  you  !  "  The  brutal  deed  was  soon  to  1  e  avenged. 
Richard's  eldest  son,  Edward,  the  Earl  of  March,  was 
busy  gathering  a  force  on  the  Welsh  border  in  support  of 
his  father  at  the  moment  when  the  Duke  was  defeated 
and  slain.  Young  as  he  was  Edward  showed  in  this  hour 
of  apparent  ruin  the  quickness  and  vigor  of  his  temper, 
and  routing  on  his  march  a  body  of  Lancastrians  at  Mor- 
timer's Cross  struck  boldly  upon  London.  It  was  on 
London  that  the  Lancastrian  army  had  moved  after  its 
victory  at  Wakefield.  A  desperate  struggle  took  place 
at  St.  Albans  where  a  force  of  Kentish  men  with  the 
Earl  of  Warwick  strove  to  bar  its  march  on  the  capital, 
but  Warwick's  force  broke  under  cover  of  night  and  an 
immediate  advance  of  the  conquerors  might  have  decided 
the  contest.  Margaret  however  paused  to  sully  her  vic- 
tory by  a  series  of  bloody  executions,  and  the  rough 
northerners  who  formed  the  bulk  of  her  army  scattered 
to  pillage  while  Edward,  hurrying  from  the  west,  ap- 
peared before  the  capital.  The  citizens  rallied  at  his 
call,  and  cries  of  u  Long  live  King  Edward  "  rang  round 
the  handsome  young  leader  as  he  rode  through  the  streets. 
A  council  of  Yorkist  lords,  hastily  summoned,  resolved 
that  the  compromise  agreed  on  in  Parliament  was  at  an 
end  and  that  Henry  of  Lancaster  had  forfeited  the  throne. 
The  final  issue  however  now  lay  not  with  Parliament, 


542  HISTORY   OF   THE   ENGLISH    PEOPLE. 

but  with  the  sword.  Disappointed  of  London,  the  Lan- 
castrian array  fell  rapidly  back  on  the  North,  and  Edward 
hurried  as  rapidly  in  pursuit.  On  the  29th  of  March, 
1461,  the  two  armies  encountered  one  another  at  Towton 
Bleld,  near  Tadcaster.  In  the  numbers  engaged,  as  well 
as  to  the  terrible  obstinacy  of  the  struggle,  no  such  battle 
had  been  seen  in  England  since  the  fight  of  Senlac.  The 
two  armies  together  numbered  nearly  120,000  men. 
The  day  had  just  broken  when  the  Yorkists  advanced 
through  a  thick  snowfall,  and  for  six  hours  the  battle 
raged  with  desperate  bravery  on  either  side.  At  one 
critical  moment  Warwick  saw  his  men  falter,  and  stabbing 
his  horse  before  them,  swore  on  the  cross  of  his  sword  to 
win  or  die  on  the  field.  The  battle  was  turned  at  last 
by  the  arrival  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  with  a  fresh  force 
from  the  Eastern  Counties,  and  at  noon  the  Lancastrians 
gave  way.  A  river  in  their  rear  turned  the  retreat  into 
a  rout,  and  the  flight  and  carnage,  for  no  quarter  was 
given  on  either  side,  went  on  through  the  night  and  the 
morrow.  Edward's  herald  counted  more  than  20,000 
Lancastrian  corpses  on  the  field.  The  losses  of  the  con- 
querors were  hardly  less  heavy  than  those  of  the  con- 
quered. But  their  triumph  was  complete.  The  Earl  of 
Northumberland  was  slain  ;  the  Earls  of  Devonshire  and 
Wiltshire  were  taken  and  beheaded ;  the  Duke  of  Som- 
erset fled  into  exile.  Henry  himself  with  his  Queen  was 
forced  to  fly  over  the  border  and  to  find  a  refuge  in 
Scotland.  The  cause  of  the  House  of  Lancaster  was 
lost ;  and  with  the  victory  of  Towton  the  crown  of  Eng- 
land passed  to  Edward  of  York 


END   OF    VOL   I. 


llulliPiW'"''"      OQ  oQ7      5 


